COMO ENTENDER A VAIDADE FEMININA UTILIZANDO A AUTOESTIMA E A PERSONALIDADE

The article seeks to understand the relationship between self-esteem and personality traits in feminine vanity and how these associations may influence propensity to undergo into cosmetic surgery. The subject has been studied using the 3M model (Mowen, 2000). The research is based on a survey of 697 students in a Brazilian Federal university, aged between 18 and 50 years old. Vanity was operationalized by two traits: vanity concern (an exaggerated concern about physical appearance), and vanity view (an excessively positive evaluation of one’s own appearance). The main finding indicate that a greater creativity, extroversion, kindness and need of body resources, is related to greater self-esteem, and also that the greater their self-esteem, the less vanity concern and the greater the vanity view. Women who are materialistic and have a greater need to body resources are more excessively concerned with their appearance. The need of body resources is also positively related to vanity view. The influence of self-esteem in the propensity to plastic surgery was noticed by means of vanity concern

"Rousseau, Amour-Propre, and Intellectual Celebrity"

With the publication of the First Discourse, Rousseau initiated a famous debate over the social value of the arts and sciences. As this debate developed, however, it transformed into a question of the value of the intellectuals as a social class and touched upon questions of identity formation. While the philosophes were lobbying to become a new cultural aristocracy, Rousseau believed the ideological glorification of intellectual talent demeaned the peasants and working classes. This essay argues that amour propre, as put forth in the Second Discourse, was in part designed to address this concern and is an attempt to highlight the dangers of making talent the measure of a human

What About Susan? Gender in Narnia

Critics of C.S. Lewis argue that his misogyny is present in his portrayal of female characters. While Lewis himself was self-contradictory in his attitudes towards women, his depictions of female characters in The Chronicles of Narnia are both realistic and progressive. Both the male and female characters throughout the series demonstrate individual strengths and weaknesses that are not dependent on their gender. The criticism against Lewis focuses on his treatment of Susan, especially regarding her being the only child not to return to Narnia at the end of the series. Unlike what the critics argue, however, Susan is not excluded simply for her sexuality

Raskolnikov: Not the Typical Criminal Man

Criminologists in the nineteenth century gave much effort to identify, classify, and understand the physical, social, and psychological characteristics of the world’s criminals. Using the lens of these early criminological theories and the scholarly interpretations of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, this paper explores the dimensions of Raskolnikov as a criminal character. Ultimately, these developing psychological and criminal anthropological theories are not successful in explaining the character of Raskolnikov. This exploration sheds light on a fundamental characteristic of human nature that Dostoevsky understands. Just as Raskolnikov is unable to be fully characterized by his utilitarian social theories, and by the theories of early criminologists, humanity is fundamentally unable to be reduced to a theory

Narcissism

Excerpt: Narcissism takes its name from the legendary figure Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a woodland pool and pined away in unrequited love, and has come to refer to self-love. It involves a vain and grandiose selfcentredness, and auto-eroticism, *hedonism, vanity, exhibitionism and arrogant ingratitude are commonly considered to be elements. The late twentieth century has been characterized as the age of narcissism because of its hedonistic self-centred focus

Babette\u27s Feast: The Persistence of Love

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. After one\u27s first viewing of Babette\u27s Feast, a film by Gabriel Axel, one may easily think that the main point of the film revolves around interpretation of religion and food. Although these certainly are two major aspects, I personally found that in many ways, love and the way it persists through time is a major feature of the movie as well. Thanks to Axel, the movie can be viewed through the lends of love, and as the plot unfolds, it becomes more obvious that the persistence of love is a point Axel wanted to send to his audience

Masculine crusaders, effeminate Greeks, and the female historian: relations of power in Sir Walter Scott's Count Robert of Paris

Gender employed as a methodological lens in the analysis of historical fiction can help to reveal implicit or explicit evaluative statements. It is deployed here to examine hierarchies in the military, political and cultural context of the encounter between ‘virile’ Westerners and ‘effeminate’ Greeks in Sir Walter Scott’s last novel, Count Robert of Paris (1831), which is set in Constantinople at the start of the First Crusade (1096-7). Scott’s depiction of Westerners and Orientalized Greeks is set against the geopolitical concerns of the author’s own time. The gendered perspective through which Scott constructs relationships in Count Robert makes it clear that the ancestors of modern Britain and France must control the East, represented here by the Byzantine Greeks. On the other hand, Scott’s ambivalent and fluctuating portrayal of the twelfthcentury historiographer Anna Comnena as a fictional character in the novel reveals his own uncertain stance between rejection and admiration of the female historian, as well as a more complex approach to gender dynamics in times of change