In The Sun Screen

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 11th grade February 2008

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The author of the Speech song advises us "Be careful of whose advise you buy, but be patient with those who supply it." What parts of his speech do you agree or disagree with? Support your assertions with examples from your own life.

Baz Luhrman¡¯s speech elaborates many thoughtful ideas to young adults. He challenges his audience with active and optimistic attitudes toward our own life through his speech, ¡®Everybody¡¯s Free to Wear Sun Screen." In this writing, I am going to explain in what respects I agree with and in what respects I do not agree with Luhrman¡¯s speech.

I agree with most of the points that Luhrman brings out in his speech. The first idea I like the most was that he writes, "Don¡¯t waste your time on jealousy." He states that to be jealous of someone wastes your time. I have never thought of it like this before.

Especially whenever I hear people tell my sister that she is pretty, I automatically feel jealous. Then, I tell myself not to be jealous of her because it is not good. I give myself only one reason not to be jealous: because it is not good. However, Luhrman narrows down the reason why I should not be jealous to be because it wastes time. Now I am convinced that jealousy is wasting my time, which is not productive at all, and is rather destroying my potential and wasting all my energy.

Secondly I agree with the point where he says, "do one thing every day that scares you." What I like in his suggestion here is that he asks me to do one thing, not many things. If he had asked me to do many things at a time, I would probably not take his advice. For example, I have experienced having many things placed for each day of my summer vacation. However, what I found was that I could not keep up with those plans that I made because it was too many things to do a day. I could never accomplish all I planned to do during the summer vacation. From my own experience, I know that it is impossible to do many things at a time, especially if they scare me. Luhrman helps me to face scary things step by step. I like his active attitude toward our lives.

However, there are some points where I disagree with Luhrman strongly. Firstly, I do not understand what he means by "Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can." I wish he had told us more specifically what he meant by this statement. Enjoying our body in what way, I wonder? It almost sounds to me that if you want to have sex with a guy, go and enjoy it, because your body can enjoy it. If you feel like taking drugs, go ahead because you can enjoy it. Luhrman seems like he does not care about self-control. I believe that doing whatever we want is not a real mature attitude that we should have in our lives.

Secondly, I dislike his idea, "do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly." Overall he seems to give young adults good advice in his speech. However, in this part he is saying that you had better avoid a situation if it makes you feel bad. There is a contradiction between this part and what he has said earlier. He says, "do one thing every day that scares you." According to him, we have to do things that scare us. Now he¡¯s saying not to read beauty magazines because you would feel that you are ugly. If we are afraid of looking ugly, isn¡¯t it something that we have to confront and ultimately find a way to solve this problem? Maybe someone is really ugly, but when I see myself and my friends, we do not actually look ugly. Yet the reason we feel like we are ugly is that we compare ourselves with others, like how we do when we read the beauty magazines. He makes it sound like you have to avoid a situation that makes you feel bad. However, my position is that if you have a problem that you feel bad about, then you have find out why you feel bad. Then, face and fight the problem until it gets solved out rather than just avoiding it. If I were he, I would suggest, "be content with who you are and do not ever compare your appearance with others because there is no one who looks like you on the earth. You have to remember that you are unique and special." In conclusion, I would say that he gives lots of courage to young adults in his speech. He gives much insightful advice for good behavior. However, in the place where he speaks about enjoying our life, I want him to elaborate more about what he means. I feel he contradicts himself when he suggests avoiding situations that make you feel bad, and at the same time suggesting to do things that we are scared of.