The Waiting Room Reflection

The purpose of this post is to discuss a play we read in class called The Waiting Room. This play was written by Lisa Loomer and is focused around three women all from different time periods. Each of these women encountered problems because they conformed to a beauty ideal from their point in time.

The key message of this play was to represent the problem of different beauty ideals. In every society there is a certain appearance that is thought to be the most beautiful. It is often thought that a person that does not conform to this idea is considered ugly. The play tries to warn us of the harm we are doing to ourselves by giving in to that pressure. The play also lets us know that there is a special type of beauty inside each and every one of us regardless of where we live in and the beauty ideals around us.

In this play Lisa Loomer discusses many modern day issues involving beauty and health. She focuses on people from different time periods that have conformed to beauty ideals. Her play shows how throughout time it has always been the women’s job to appeal to the men. Although this has changed in modern day society, men still influence women and how they look. Throughout time women have had to conform to the most extreme beauty ideals while the men have stayed the same.

The three main characters evolve throughout the play. At the beginning a Chinese woman named Forgiveness From Heaven is in the waiting room due to her foot binding which in her time period was considered beautiful. At the beginning, all she wanted to do was please her husband in any way possible. As the play progressed she realized that she needed to set herself free from the pressure. The play ends with her taking of her foot bindings. Another character that evolved throughout the play was Victoria. She was from the Victorian period and had a problem with her husband. Due to her strange form of hysteria, her husband thought her ovaries needed to be removed which was often thought of as the cause of strange behavior in women at that time. Over the course of the play Victoria realized that her hysteria was a problem in her mind and that she was fine because she accepted herself. The last main character to have evolved was Wanda. This is the character most people relate to due to the fact that she lived in modern day time. At first she cared a lot about her self image and went through much plastic surgery to fix herself up. Over the course of the play she found out she had breast cancer and had to get her breasts removed. After this happened she realized that she didn’t need to look beautiful for everyone as long as she was happy with herself.

There were other characters in this play. Ken and Larry were two guys trying to pass a drug that would cure certain types of cancer. Larry was the spearhead of the drug and was really pushing for it even if he had to do something illegal. Ken worked for the FDA and would screw up the tests in favor of Larry and his drug if he had to. Lisa Loomer used these characters to show the corruption of many modern day drug companies. She tried to show that even if the drug industry is supposed to help you they do it for their own profit and put their customers at risk.

Lisa Loomer ended her play with a few loose ends. I believe she did this to provoke critical thinking from the audience. I believe this is effective because it allows people to think for themselves in a way that affects them and their lifestyle.