Assessment 2

1. | Read and say if you agree with this view point. Share your ideas with your classmates.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The line above is from the song “Not Pretty enough,” written and performed by Kasey Chambers, an Australian folk singer and songwriter. The words tell us a lot about what it’s like to be a female in a society in which media such as television, movies, and magazines define what it means to be beautiful. In cultures where success and happiness are equated* with being thin and attractive “just like models or movie stars,” many young women are left feeling either invisible or fat and unaccepted.

It might not surprise you to read that 75 percent of women in the United States think that they are “too fat”. But many people don’t realize how these ideas about body image have affected teenagers and children. You don’t have to look much farther than a billboard sign* , magazine advertisement, or popular television show to see how girls and women are being presented and to understand how it affects them. Young people can benefit from realizing how much they are being targeted as a consumer group and how media messages are used to either sell them products or convey messages about body image, self-esteem, social values and behavior.

2. Choose and write a paragraph on one of the following themes.
♦ About the clothes you wear
♦ About our national clothes
♦ About popular fashion shows in
♦ Azerbaijan and abroad
♦ About famous designers in Azerbaijan and abroad
♦ About famous people and their styles

3. | IW. Write a paragraph explaining your opinion about one of these expressions. Give concrete examples from your life.

■ Beauty is only skin-deep.
■ Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
■ Beauty is happiness.
■ Beauty without virtue* is like a rose without scent.
■ Look at Leyli with Majnun’s eyes. (Nizami Ganjavi)
*equate - consider (one thing) to be the same as or equivalent to another.
*billboard sign - a large outdoor board for displaying advertisements.
*virtue - behaviour showing high moral standards.