Alice Walker Beauty

Words: 792
Pages: 4

In the essay called " Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self " explores Alice Walker's journey of self discovery. One's perception of beauty can have a great impact on the physical, social, and emotional aspects of life but all that can change when one stops seeking validation from others. The protagonist Alice walker is introduced to the readers as a young happy child who is cute and has a lot of admires because of her physical appearance. Suddenly everything changes when the happy and loving community she was used to turns its back on her after a tragic accident that injured her right eye and leaving it blind and deformed. " It is really how I look that bothers me the most, there is a glob of whitish scar tissue , a hideous cataract on my eye" (40). The whitish scar tissue that is on her blind eye calls for attention and she does not like it because it is what people notice at first when they look at her .She is left with low self esteem due to how her appearance has changed. The pressure that comes with being blind and feeling unappealing leads her to be insecure which causes to face the ground than making contact with others " For six years I do not stare at anyone , because I do not raise my head" (40). Coming for a community that …show more content…
We dance and kiss each other and hold each other through the night . The other dancer has obviously come through all right , as I have done . She is beautiful, whole, and free. she is also me" (43).After all the years she felt shame and had to hide her face and be self destructive. Walker feels beautiful again and her outlook on life changes too. She sends a message to the readers that self acceptance does more good than trying to appease everyone's definition of beauty