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women as objects, but rather, that he thinks women should be expected to use their minds. In "Stella's Birthday, 1719," Swift shows his appreciation of a woman's intelligence. The speaker states, "No age could furnish out a pair / Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair; /.../ With half your wit, your years, and size (Swift, "Stella's Birthday, 1719" 11-14). In this quotation, Swift again focuses on negative physical attributes of a woman, but here they are balanced with a complement to the woman's wit. He implies that the physical attributes do not matter because all that really matters is wit; therefore, intelligence should be what both men and women aspire to. Through exaggeration and exposure, Swift tries to change both men and women's behaviours and attitudes toward one another.

Swift accuses men of bring unwilling to accept that women are human and creating an ideal that women are forced to try to conform to. As Felicity Nussbaum explains, Swift criticizes "men who must discover and rediscover to their surprise, that women are mortal" (550). In "A Lady's Dressing Room," Strephon's frustration and disappointment stems from his deluded imagination. He looks around Celia's room and "...swears how damnably the men lie, / In calling Celia sweet and cleanly" (18-19). Strephon is Swift's example of a man consumed by a vision of the ideal female. Swift assails men for looking at women with the wrong perspective and argues that having such high expectations only distorts reality and ultimately leads to ones disappointment. Strephon images Celia is a goddess, but then, shocked by the contents of her dressing room, he constructs a completely new view of her in his imagination. However, the following passage suggests that neither view is very accurate:
The virtues we must not let pass
Of Celia's magnifying glass;
When frightened Strephon cast his eye on't,
It showed the visage of a giant:
A glass that can to sight disclose
The smallest worm in Celia's nose,
And faithfully direct her nail
To squeeze it out from head to tail;
For catch it nicely by the head,
It must come out alive or dead. (59-68)

All of what Strephon discovers about Celia is speculative; the only thing he can really see when he looks in her mirror is his own face or the "visage of a giant" (61). He imagines Celia using the mirror to view a worm in her nose, but the reader recognizes that this is only Strephon's fantastic imagination going to extremes. As Tita Chico points out, "Strephon's moment of self-reflection

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