Waiting Room Essay

My class and I recently read a play called The Waiting Room. This story is all about three women from different time periods who go to the doctor’s office for different health problems regarding beauty. The first woman is a Chinese lady from the 1800’s who is named Forgiveness From Heaven. She has had her feet bound since she was a girl to make them smaller. This was seen as beautiful then and appealing to men.
The second woman is Victoria from the 1700’s who wears a tight corset. Also, her husband believes that she has heredity and is not acting like a suitable lady should. As she becomes more rebellious against him and his beliefs as the play progresses, this worries him even more.
The final woman is a New Jersey gal from the modern day named Wanda. She spends the majority of her days trying to find ways to make her look more voluptuous and sexy for the guys. She is desperately looking for a man to become her husband as soon as possible and will do this with little regard for her health.
This play has a key message concerning gender roles of women and men and how they interact concerning beauty. Forgiveness’s husband has multiple other wives that he has strong control over. She has accepted the binding of her feet although it has severely hurt her for years and her toe has fallen off. Victoria has accepted the role of being a simple housewife who accompanies her husband to events, supports him, and takes care of all their children. Wanda is not really living a happy life, but she passes the time enjoyably by drinking, searching for guys, and of course “beautifying herself”.
Two other important characters in this story are Ken who is an FDA official and Larry who is a major drug company Vice President as well as a board member in a big cancer center. Throughout the play they discuss cancer treatments. This subject is a very important one in the story because not only does Wanda find that she has cancer like the rest of her family, but so does a doctor named Douglas. One of the treatments is called the Carson’s serum that was made in Jamaica and the other is called INT-2 that was made by Larry’s pharmaceutical company in the United States. As they spend time together, getting massages and playing golf, Larry persuades Ken to shut down Carson’s serum saying that it contained HIV infection. I believe that this gives an interesting view of the health departments and pharmaceutical companies by saying that these companies don’t have our health and best interests at heart.
As the play progresses, the three ladies begin to become more vulnerable and uncomfortable with the way they been living there lives, mostly under the influence of their husbands. They begin to question the logic of beauty and what everyone expects of them. This is similar to what my class has been discussing for the pass few weeks. We have been wondering how beauty is defined. Most of us said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder while at the same time we all still follow the format the media sets for us.
My favorite part of this play is how Lisa Loomer ended the story portraying the ideal happiness that we all strive for through a fairy tale. The story ends with Victoria leaving with her husband, who she comes to an understanding with, and Wanda reading Forgiveness the popular fairy tale Snow White. She then tells a story of her own. It’s about three women who are extremely foolish and all they care about is what they look like and how others see them, but then they come to understand that this is stupid and they ladies tell all the other women in the kingdom that they’re beautiful no matter what other people say. This ending is a very emotional part especially for Wanda who releases all her feelings and really sums up the extremity of how far people go to achieve “beauty”. I think that this is a great way to simulate our modern world as well as our past that judged people largely on what they look like.