On Being A Cripple By Nancy Mairs

The appearance is not important for our lives. Most people would say that yes. Appearance is important, but it’s not everything to know who they really are. Lucy Grealy in, Autobiography of a Face, has cancer on her face, and she has to remove the part of her face. That ruins her childhood. In her college years, she learns the way how she looks is not the only thing to her life. Nancy Mairs in, On Being a Cripple, suffer from a disability, and has uncomfortable movements. Although Grealy and Mairs suffer from their illness, at the end, the way how Grealy and Mairs look is not everything to them. No matter how people view their illness that cause their appearance doesn’t change who they are.
In the memoir Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy

When she’s alone, she feels fine because there is nobody to judge her. She made up her mind to write about her own story when she falls in the women’s room. The author writes “the building deserted, I was free to laugh aloud as I wriggled back to my feet, my voice bouncing off the yellowish tiles from all directions. Had anyone been there with me, I’d have been still and faint and hot with chagrin. I decided that it was high time to write the essay” (20). In the women’s room, Nancy falls down, but that doesn’t make her sad or disappoint. She was free laugh, she wouldn’t laugh if she was with someone, but she was alone, so she laughs and decides to write her own story. Her disability is not something makes to laugh about, but she does. Disability is a serious ailment, but Nancy doesn’t get depressed, because her personality and her illness is not related to each other. She realizes nobody can judge about her illness. Her essay is about her life, and her illness is just one piece of her life. She is not happy to have a disability, that doesn’t change her personality. Mairs cares about appearance even she limps. She tries to wear nice dresses, paints her nails, because she doesn’t want other people to think she needs helps. Grealy doesn’t want to be alone, but Mairs does. She feels comfortable being

Grealy has fear of how people view about her illness that cause her appearance. In Mairs’s story, she tries not to get stressed from her illness and believes her disability can’t stop whatever she wants to do. In Grealy’s story, she realizes her appearance from the illness is not her fault, and decided stop caring about how she look. They suffer from their illnesses and society makes them feel uncomfortable about not being a normal. After all, they overcame with their illness and believe how they look doesn’t make any difference about who they really