The Disposable Rocket By Margaret Atwood

It is easy to feel like we are not good enough. Advertisements, films, and television shows quickly, but efficiently, persuade young and old alike that these ‘perfect’ beings of media are the only standard of beauty. In fact, in the film Mean Girls, picking apart every body part is seen as an expectation. Confidence can come across as almost abnormal. While the authors Margaret Atwood and John Updike struggle in feeling satisfied with their own bodies and romanticizing the opposite sex’s body, their contrasting use of tone and imagery in the essays "The Female Body" and "The Disposable Rocket" respectively distinguishes their body insecurities and battle with self-esteem.

Throughout the essay "The Female Body", Atwood repeatedly demonstrates her discomfort with her own body and that of females in

Similarly, Updike's "The Disposable Rocket" outlines his own discomfort with the 'disposability' of the male body. Atwood hints at her exhaustion within her own body. She confirms that women, contrary to skin care commercials on television, do not wake up in the morning and splash cold water perfectly over the sink, with a smile. This authenticity Atwood presents reveals that she is nothing more than human when she describes her body as, “my limping topic, my nearsighted topic, my topic with back problems, my badly behaved topic, my vulgar topic…” (211). These problems are neither seen nor discussed about ‘real’ women, let alone models and celebrity personalities. Society's woman is a marketing tool: it is seen as an object, used to sell a myriad of products. Advertisements never seem to associate women’s bodies with intelligence. This is perhaps why it is extremely easy to see women simply as objects. Atwood demonstrates her disappointment in society by saying, “Money flows into this country or that country, flies in, practically crawls in … lured by all those hairless pre-teen legs” (212). She recognizes that not only