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• 1 media/122847-gorgerous-darkness-wallpaper-3840x2160-ipad-retina.jpg media/a14cca6b93cb5da016a12990484f9338.jpg 2018-05-07T09:22:50-07:00 The Doom of Lily 35 image_header 2019-05-14T10:07:33-07:00 In the novel, House of Mirth, the protagonist, Lily Bart, is faced with the pressure of social class standings. A woman like Lily, who is obsessed with wealth and being a woman of the upper class, is made to believe by people close to her, including her mother, that she can conquer anything in society with the power of her beauty.

  “Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's beauty. She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance. It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt. She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she tried to instill into the latter a sense of the responsibility that such a charge involved.” (p. 34)

  The narrator here mentions this about Lily’s mother, who may well be a representation of how society views Lily. She is made to believe that her beauty is her greatest weapon and her strongest tool towards prosperity. Her beauty is associated with the term, "nucleus," making it the center-point of their lives. It is almost as though their world revolves around and depends on her appearance. However, little does she know that her beauty would be her greatest weakness, too. Due to her own obsession with objectifying herself and reducing her value to just her beauty, she is never able to be with her true soulmate, Selden.
  Even though, initially, Selden fell for Lily because of her looks, he does care about her ultimately, enough to want to marry her regardless of her social standing. Lily is so obsessed with becoming rich that she sides with society’s perspective of her and uses her looks to try to get rich men to like her. By trying to compete with society’s classes and standards, Lily loses to her life.
  
  This is similar to the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, where the main character, Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn, aims to attract a man with her looks and marry him for his money. Instead of picking Paul Varjak, who confesses his love to her and insists on marrying her, she chooses to marry Jose, a man who is "wildly rich" just as she had always desired.
  Holly was always awestruck by Tiffany and Co and fascinated by how the rich people could enter the place and actually purchase something. She makes herself believe that she needs that to be her life, and to do that her beauty would be her only weapon. This is evident in her clothing style, She dresses like an upper-class woman, as does Lily. It is as though they allow the social class hierarchy to affect them and cause them to objectify themselves to a point where they do not just reduce themselves to their beauty, but also make themselves believe that they need to look and dress a certain way for their beauty to show through the harshness of society.
  
  Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, media has not stopped objectifying women. This objectification roots from how easy it is for society to devalue women. Moreover, the present media objectifies women in various forms. For instance, the song "Animals" by Maroon 5 (2014), has a line that practically describes the concept of rape: 

  "You can find other fish in the sea
  You can pretend it's meant to be
  But you can't stay away from me"

  The song peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 giving Maroon 5 their tenth top 10 single in the U.S. and was rated number 1 in many countries worldwide. Media feeds off people's likes and needs. If songs as such are gaining so much fame regardless of its harsh, belittling of women, then there will be many Lilys and Hollys to come even with the advancement of the world.