Needs to Know and Understand do not Form a Part of Hope Donahue’s

40 intended to do, not because I was lazy or vain, but because I believed that my appearance was all I had to offer” Donahue 27. As a result, she cannot keep up her achievement in graduate school. She nearly fails all her classes in her first semester and her marks drop, as shown in the quotation below. My blonde good looks and sunny demeanor did not score my any points among my fellow students or professors. USC was all about being rewarded for the outside; Berkeley was intensely intellectual. Whereas in high school and college I had never had to try very hard to get good grades, at Berkeley I found myself among students who were as motivated as I pretended to be, real journalists in the making, many of whom were paying their own way through school Donahue 27. This condition further proves Hope’s inability to fulfill her needs to study and find knowledge. She still has her intelligence and adequate facilities as before, but she cannot enjoy the process of studying and finding knowledge, so she fails to develop intellectually to match the demand of her graduate study. Although the needs to know and understand are not fulfilled in Hope Donahue’s life, these needs do not directly motivate Hope to do plastic surgery. Instead, these needs just help to explain how extreme Hope’s obsession to be beautiful and to improve her appearance is. Her needs to study and find knowledge are always eclipsed by her efforts to pursue beauty, so she cannot gain satisfaction and happiness from studying and finding knowledge. This condition is described in her statement, such as “Language came easily to me and I was in the Advanced Placement French class. But none of these interests seemed as compelling or urgent to me as being beautiful” Donahue 120 and “I had long ago lost interest in academic subjects, my early talent for creative writing eclipsed 41 by my intense fixation on my appearance” Donahue 26. It is also supported by the following quotation. My new creative writing journal, a gift from my English teacher in Hong Kong, who said that it would be a crime if I didn’t keep on writing, lay blank and abandoned at the bottom of my suitcase. It was as if I’d been administered a highly addictive drug called Being Pretty, and it was slowly taking over my system, killing off all the other things I used to be interested in. I thought about my looks all the time, wondering constantly who was looking and, if they were, what did they see? A pretty girl? A homely, gangly girl? Donahue 53 Her pursue of beauty gives her more satisfaction and happiness than her pursue of knowledge. It shows that she is willing to put everything aside, including her pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of beauty. For example, she rarely even stays overnight in her dorm in university because she does not want people to see her without any makeup Donahue 26, and she spends more time putting on makeup than doing her homework, as described in the following quotation. My mother’s desire for me to be glamorous, stunning, and charming—to dazzle my father’s family—added to the pressure I already heaped upon myself. It took an enormous amount of time and effort to make myself beautiful, about two and a half hours of preparation. I spent far more time on my appearance than I did on my schoolwork. I did moderately well with a minimum of effort at the private, all-girls high school I attended Donahue 120. While these unfulfilled needs to know and understand do not directly explain her motivation to do plastic surgery, this unfulfilled condition explains the extent of Hope’s obsession with beauty, to be precise her willingness to put her other needs aside to achieve beauty. The most extreme way of altering her appearance to improve her beauty is through plastic surgery. Thus, the needs to know and understand do not directly motivate Hope to do plastic surgery but 42 become an indicator of how Hope is easily motivated to do plastic surgery by other needs or factors.

4.6 Aesthetic Needs as the Motivation in Doing Plastic Surgery

Aesthetic needs refer to the need for beauty, which can help people to become healthier. In some individuals, the need for beauty is very deep and ugliness is sickening. This need is correlated to self-image. When this need is low in an individual, the individual’s self-image is also low Maslow 75. These needs are not fulfilled in Hope Donahue’s life. Her need for beauty is not fulfilled. To be precise, Hope lacks the self- image obtained from her need for beauty. In reality, she is actually beautiful enough, as shown in her statement “I am five-feet-eight-inches tall, with a model’s build, blonde hair, and green eyes. People say I am beautiful” Donahue 1 and her comment when she sees her photograph, “What I see astonishes me: a young, lovely, seemingly uncomplicated woman, not at all the despairing, unattractive person I see every day” Donahue 247. However, she always feels lacking in beauty, so her need for beauty is never fulfilled in Hope’s mind. This obsession for beauty began when Hope was a young child. As a child, she idolized her mother’s beauty and wanted to be like her mother. This is shown in Hope’s description of her mother, “She was like a beautiful alien. Her beauty set her apart and made her special and unique the way I longed to be seen as special” Donahue 36. Hope says that her mother is “fair and soft and lovely”, and she searched her face for signs of her mother’s beauty “like Ulysses scouting 43 for land” Donahue 15. In her logic as a child, Hope associates happiness in her family with her mother’s beauty, as described below. As a child, my mother’s beauty shone like a beacon of hope to me, absolving her of all fault. Once, looking through boxes in my grandmother’s basement, I came across an old 1960s Harlequin romance upon which was sketched, I was sure, a picture of my mother: a swooning beauty with round blue eyes, pert nose, shapely mouth, and long hair the color of butter. When my father called her “Hey Gorgeous,” I knew all was well in our house Donahue 21. In turn, Hope’s mother develops Hope’s obsession by teaching her to focus on beauty. Since Hope was a child, she never teaches Hope anything else except how to become beautiful. Hope’s mother gives example by wearing “a shockingly bright, bare jumpsuit, halter-backed, of vivid magenta silk” which “barely covered her breasts, clearly braless beneath the thin fabric”, telling Hope that “A girl has to compete around here to make a splash, you know” Donahue 40. She tells Hope to lie in the sun so she “wouldn’t be so pasty” Donahue 52. She never tells Hope she is beautiful when they are alone, but she brags about Hope’s beauty in public. In stores when I’d try on clothes my mother perched herself by the mirror outside the dressing room and insisted that I come out and twirl around. “Look at my beautiful daughter” she’d exclaim to salesclerks, her effervescent praise uncorked by an audience Donahue 70. Hope’s mother’s behavior seems as if she is only proud of Hope because of her beauty, not her other characteristics, her intelligence, or Hope herself as an individual, and as if beauty is the most worthy asset to show to other people. By behaving like that, Hope’s mother stresses the importance of beauty on Hope’s mind from an early age. Hope’s mother’s demands make Hope feel even more pressure to be beautiful, as shown in her statement, “My mother’s desire for me to