"Inside the Waiting Room"- A Reflective Essay

The Waiting Room, written by the sensational Lisa Loomer, is a satirical yet emotionally moving play that tells the tale of three women from varying time periods who come together while still in their search for beauty. The Waiting Room provides many laughs and jaw-dropping moments throughout the play while still being able to convey key messages to the audience. Throughout this play we realize that our “quest for beauty” has surpassed the ages, as displayed by the three key characters, and that beauty is constantly changing as we continue to seek for it. One of the significant messages that I believe I got out of this play, was that true beauty resides within one’s self and the respect they have for themselves. During the play we learn of how much these three different women have degraded themselves body and mind in order to become socially acceptable in their society. An important thing that a person should know throughout their lives is that in this “search for beauty”, the main priority is to beautify the soul before working on anything else. A person must believe first they are beautiful without anyone having to interfere. It is the way in which a person carries themselves and how they act that reflects their real beauty, not just the aesthetics.

All of the three characters are a representation of their society’s perception of beauty. Although each of the women come from three very different time periods, it seems that our views about beauty, gender roles, as well as health have changed but have never really progressed. Wanda, who is a modern gal from Jersey strives to become beautiful by going on crash diets, getting breast implants, liposuction, and even taking drugs in order to become thin. She even tries to be a “ditz” so that she may appear to be less intelligent that she really is. However she experiences the repercussions of her actions when she finds herself having breast cancer. Forgiveness who is from 18^th century China, has bound feet which has led her to sacrifice toes and almost even amputate her foot, all just to please her husband. She’s very cheerful and naïve, and it appears that she is almost child-like in personality. While Victoria, a proper and self-controlled woman from 19^th century England, wears a corset with nearly 20 lbs of clothing and tries to hide the fact that she’s reading books from her husband. Each sacrifices their state of mind and health enduring pain all so that they may be able to please society and the opposite sex. With Victoria and Forgiveness, they’re often controlled by their husband, obliging by their demands and their needs. The same can almost said about Wanda and today’s society, however Wanda seems to let herself be controlled by society’s wants and needs.

Although each woman is plagued by their society’s standard of beauty throughout the play, as they play progresses they each one of them changes and goes through a sort of evolution with the help of the other characters. The three women develop an odd but affectionate friendship with one another, and in a way they open each other’s eyes and help each other realize different things. Victoria’s relationship with Wanda helped her become empowered and come out of shell. Although she obliges to her husband’s request of getting a hysterectomy to “cure” her hysteria, in the end she was still able to stand up to her husband and shed some of the control he had over her. Victoria has also aided Wanda in her evolution, telling her that “My dear you have the vote, you can learn Greek you have no obligations, you can read any book in the world…” (pg. 69) having Wanda admit a very personal detail and helped her realize how much time she’s wasted throughout her life. “Ive spent 6,750 hours of my life…on my hair”, Wanda states, “And yeah dying would be a bitch. But isn’t it worse- not living when you’re alive?” (pg.71). One of the most pivotal moments in the play was during Wanda’s monologue, while she was telling a “fairy tale story” to forgiveness. In this fairy tale, Wanda tells the story of how three stupid sisters came to a magician to make them become perfect. But the magic “started to go back”, and when the three stupid sisters came back to the magician, the magician replied, “I didn’t say you’d be perfect forever…Check out the shingles. It says ‘Magician’, not ‘God’” (pg.75). Wanda then talks about how the three sisters broke all of the mirrors in the kingdom and reassured all the women that they looked “beautiful”. While telling this story, Wanda realizes what she knew all along. That one doesn’t have to be this many pounds, and have enhanced features to be beautiful. If you know and believe that you are beautiful, then you truly are. This story is also crucial to Forgiveness’s change. Through this story, Forgiveness was able to “unwrap the bound years” and the chains of society from her feet to become free.

During the play, Lisa Loomer includes insight into the health and drug industry with the characters of Ken and Larry. Ken is an FDA official and Larry is the Vice President of a major pharmaceutical company and on the board of cancer center. The characters are essential to the plot of the play, because they are the ones who decide whether a certain treatment that might help cure cancer could be used. However money, greed, and “business” come into play with this decision reflecting the real-life dilemmas of the health industry and pharmaceutical companies. In the play, there is a treatment that has had some good results with curing cancer which was created in Jamaica. However Larry strongly opposes bringing this treatment into the United States, because it could cause him and others to lose profit in their investment with another treatment. Many businessmen in the health industry do not entirely care for the welfare of the American public, but rather the profit that they gain from us. In a way, the pharmaceutical industry and the beauty industry are very much alike. Each of them do not care about how their decisions or influence effect the health of Americans, because they are solely concerned with financial gain.

The play ended with the final image of Forgiveness finally being able to use her feet as dances and dances; twirling and spinning off the bondage throughout the ages. Whether this resembled Forgiveness’s death or just a dream can be left to interpretation. I personally believe that Forgiveness “moved on”, her soul leaving her mangled physical body and rejoicing in the body of her spirit. In the end, Victoria returned home to 19^th century England with her corset but was wearing a new sense of empowerment. I believe that Lisa Loomer chose this ending for Victoria to signify that things cannot change over night, and many people must still lead the lives that society intended them to. Wanda’s fate is left unknown as she continues her life in the world that we live in now. All three of these characters did not receive a “happy ending”, however I thought that this was a wonderful way to end a wonderful play. We will never know what will happen to Victoria, Wanda, and Forgiveness, because life takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. It would be quite interesting to create an Act Three of the play, in which Wanda continues to deal with her cancer and with the temptations of going back to her old ways. However, I wouldn’t have had the play end any other way. I think that it is best to leave this play open-ended because it allows the audience to create their own interpretation of what happens to these characters. After all, isn’t everything “in the eye of the beholder”?