Response to "From Two or Three Things I Know For Sure"

I really relate to this piece. The relationship between her aunt and her is very similar to my aunt and I; we think alike and have similar personalities. I think Allison is playing on the idea that every girl struggles with at one point or another in her life. I love how she associates the south as people who pretend that they owed a plantation and then there are those that are considered as trash. This piece kind of goes along of what I was writing about in my personal essay; family has a way of feeling connected to us whether we like it or not. My favorite line is: “Solid, stolid, wide-hipped baby machines.” I think even today’s society, we have this image of beauty and if you are not as Allison puts it “…good hair, curled or straightened to fit the fashion, had slender hips…” then you are considered ugly. This piece reminds me of Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just, where it explains how beauty is something we want to replicate, remember and reproduce with. So it begs the question of whether beauty is human nature or our developed perception from advertising companies. In my opinion, I think we are drawn by beautiful things, but when it comes to people, I think we sometimes forget about inner beauty because we are so focused on outer beauty. Allison again describes beauty from her girlfriend as “…that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.” Which goes to show, that inner beauty is more important to have because at the end of the day if a woman cannot hold an intelligent and thoughtful conversation, then is she really still beautiful?