The waiting room!!!!

This play was very interesting and really shook me up in some cases. It opened up my eyes to a new reality that I was potentially part of. The play shows the different pressures and lifestyles women have experienced throughout the years. It presents the idea that even though there were different ways in which women were thought to be throughout the centuries they all go through trouble to attempt to make themselves look more appealing to the public eye.

This play has many messages. One of the messages in my opinion that this play tries to get across is that going through all this pain just to please someone else is not worth it. Especially when you realize that it wasn't worth it because you should be living your life for you and you only. Also I think that it shows that people have been putting out these ideal beauties because they then have the potential to be of beauty other than to themselves. Another message is that beauty is only within yourself and that no one can strip you of your personal beauty because even if it doesn't directly show it is will always be a part of you.

Lisa Loomer really brings out the realities of not only modern day societies problems but the history of problems that are building up and that are starting to take over. She makes some very interesting point on our modern day society! One of the ladies in the play is named Brenda. She is a Jamaican nurse working for one of the doctors working in the waiting room. She is a very strong, opinionated woman. During one part of the play she is talking to one of the male doctors who is having trouble since he has cancer. They are talking about a "cure" that was unproven but it was discovered by a man in Jamaica. She then says, "Maybe you good people don't want to fix cancer. Maybe there's a cancer industry out there and it does not want to die. After all, no one is in business for their health.". I thought that this quote was definitely one of the more interesting ones from the play. It talks about how she thinks that Americans are too selfish to find a cure for cancer if it is expensive because she thinks that people just work to get the money and they don't do it for the moral benefit or the health of others. I semi agree with her because some people are very greedy in the sense that some people just work to make money to spend but others work from passion.

This play also shows that people weren't/aren't considering their health when they do things to "better" themselves beauty wise. For instance Forgiveness From Heaven (the Asian woman) had her feet bound which was very unhealthy for them because it causes lots of pain and bad smells. Also the Victorian woman had a corset that was very tight. It caused her organs to move around having an end result of hysteria. This shows that people go to the extremes just to achieve the appealing look for the public eye.

In addition "The Waiting Room" shows how men were perceived back then and now a days. Back then men played the dominant role in the relationship and the women were almost seen as pleasurable objects. The men were in charge of what the women did most of the time. For instance Victoria's husband, Oliver, made her get a surgery removing her reproductive organs because he didn't believe that her research about her disease was right.

During this play there are three main women characters; the Victorian woman (Victoria), the Asian woman (Forgiveness From Heaven), and the woman from modern day New Jersey (Wanda). They all are in the waiting room for a problem they having from trying to make themselves "more beautiful". Victoria has a tight corset causing hysteria, Forgiveness is loosing her toes because she had her feet bound, and Wanda finds out she has breast cancer possibly from her multiple cosmetic surgeries such as breast implants. They all go through problems and come out with different results. Victoria is very much controlled by her husbands thoughts on her sickness because he is a doctor. She had not much freedom and was a rebel in the sense that she read books such as Freud's when he told her it would only make her hysteria worse. For instance, Victoria is talking to Wanda she says "My husband and I were discussing Freud's theories, you see, and my husband, quite accidentally, of course dropped Freud. Into the fire." She ends up getting the procedure removing her ovaries and in the end abides by her husbands rules. However, on the other hand Forgiveness starts off in love with her husband even though he is dominant and also thinking her husband is innocent when he has five other wives. She only has her feet bound because her husband gets pleasure from the smell and the sight of small feet. For example, Blessing, Forgivenesses husband, eats a leech off her foot because he likes the way it tastes. However, she realizes that going through all this pain isn't worth it because he has five other women so she isn't special anymore. She then starts unbinding her feet at the end symbolizing that she is a free woman. Wanda is the one woman who doesn't have a man by her side. She starts off at the beginning of the play as a strong woman who is all about her outside appearance. She is all for impressing the men until she is diagnosed with breast cancer. She in my opinion makes the biggest change of all of them. She realizes the good things in life other than impressions and starts to become her own woman and let go of the bad things in life.

Ken and Larry play a quiet yet bold part in this play. They're both people in the cancer treatment business. Larry has a method of treating cancer and he wants his method to be tried out, however there is another treatment that is probably more effective but he is being greedy. On the other hand Ken works for the FDA. He is one of the people that decide whose treatments get tested and whose don't. I think that their role is portraying what really goes on in this business. It is trying to show that even though there are more effective treatments out there people are too greedy to let them be passed because they want their own to pass.

The ending in my opinion was very well set. It showed that Wanda went deep inside herself to find out that she was beautiful in and out and that pleasing other people was not worth it if she was in turn hurting herself. Also, Wanda is the one that helps Forgiveness find herself. She tells the fairytale of the three women and it really opened up her eyes to the beauty of freedom and no pressure. However, I don't think that Victoria's part was resolved. I think that she kind of gave in but it doesn't really mention what goes on with her after. In the end I think that this play is very realistic in describing the sad but true ways of our modern day society.