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Alice Walker Beauty

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Achieving Beauty
In Alice Walker’s “Beauty When the Other Dancer is the self”, Walker comes to terms with her childhood ‘accident’ through examples of gender power, racial discrimination, and selfish violence.
Alice Walker has three main memories she recalls inside and explains in the essay. The first being her connection and relationship with her father and her family. Her accident involves her brothers shooting her in the eye using new BB guns given by the parents. “There is a tree growing from underneath the porch that climbs past the railing to the roof. It is the last thing my right eye sees.” As her father rushes to call a car to get his daughter to the hospital, a white man stops …show more content…

“I abuse my eye. I rant and rave at it, in front of the mirror. I plead with it to clear up before morning” (Walker 30-33). After being shot in the eye, Walker cannot determine that the incident was an accident or done deliberately in order to damage her physical looks so her father would not pick her anymore. She went through a surgery to improve the appearance of her eye that she started to find self-courage and acceptance. When Walker feels beautiful once more, and her view upon life improves dramatically in almost every aspect: Give examples. Alice begins to keep her head held high, she starts to talk more and attains the boyfriend of her dreams, she excels in school once more and generally feels more self confident. I feel that beauty has this universal definition to society and the expectation that it must be met to achieve internal and external happiness. Society has a stereotype of beauty itself. Society believes that beauty has a universal definition which every person experiences. What Walker is trying to put forward is that beauty can come in different forms and meanings. Walker pursues the societal norm that different configurations of beauty must be achieved to attain internal and external happiness. These including the need to feel welcomed by others, the need to experience true happiness and feel needed, the need to feel self-worthy and loved, and the aspiration to feel confident in one’s skin. This is what Alice Walker faces and it is this misconception she experiences throughout her life and defies

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