Lucy Grealy "Autobiography of a Face"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Lucy Grealy, in her book "Autobiography of a Face", tells how she spent much of her childhood in and out of hospitals for painful cancer treatments and failed facial reconstructions and how she experienced emotionally searing bullying. The author relates Grealy's story of her several empty sexual affairs, which made her feel important, loved and needed by a man. The paper reports that, while her book ends happily with her rejection of beauty norms and embracing her own uniqueness, her life ended abruptly at the age of 39. The author concludes that, in this autobiography, the themes of ideal female beauty and sexuality are tied together in the life and experiences of Lucy Grealy.

From the Paper:

"In Shaw and Lee's book "Women's Voices, Feminist Visions", several points are made about the beauty ideal that are directly relevant to Lucy Grealy's life. The authors note that "contemporary images of female beauty are changeable...what is considered beautiful is culturally produced and therefore changes across time and across cultures." While there are changing standards, such as that being thin in some cultures and time periods is considered ugly and a sign of being poor, Lucy Grealy's facial deformity does not fall into one of those changing beauty standards."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Grealy, L. (1994). Autobiography of a Face. New York: Harper Perennial.
• Shaw, S. M., & Lee, J. (Eds.) (2004). Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill.

More papers on Lucy Grealy "Autobiography of a Face":

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• Book Review # 103018 : "The Reading Experience"

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