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
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“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
The short story/essay “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” written by Alice Walker demonstrates the story of Alice accepting herself despite her flaws. As a child, Alice is a pretty, outgoing, and messy girl; but that all changes in a matter of seconds. Alice loses sight in one of her eyes, changing her perspective on life for a majority of her life. She went from the outgoing girl whom everybody seems to love, to the girl that doesn’t look up anymore in fear people will see her messed up eye. Growing up in 1947 with her family, she is not a rich child, in fact, almost dirt poor, so her parents can’t afford a car to take her to the hospital, contributing to her losing sight in her eye. Although she tells her parents a reason causing her to injure her eye, it is a lie, so that she is able to protect her siblings from becoming in trouble. Alice Walker demonstrates a theme of lying to protect siblings in her life which I can relate to because I oftenly as a child had to lie to protect my siblings as well.
1. Walker put the word “accident” in quotations throughout her essay because her getting shot in the eye by her brother’s BB gun was not much of an accident. The story that was told to her parents suggested that a wire was responsible for her eye injury. I truly believe that Walker has come to peace with the “accident” and its consequences after her daughter had noticed her scar on her eye. She expressed her fear of the day her daughter would be old enough to notice her mother’s face was different than everyone else’s. Once her daughter had finally observed her physical flaw, she realized that it would not change how her daughter felt about her.
Ultimately, Miner exposes that american vanity is much more demanding than what it seems and that the standard of perfection through beauty is a burden put on all americans. Beauty is defined as qualities that pleases the aesthetic senses. There is no one solidified list of qualities in order to be beautiful. Beauty comes in many forms and we all find it in different experiences in our lives. Then sometimes beauty can be hidden right in plain
The emotional focus of Alice Walker 's story is rage, red-hot and isolating. As I read this piece, I became livid, not only at the thought of her devastating injury and her family 's apparent disassociation, but also at Ms. Walker herself. It appeared to me that she never let go of it. Instead, she seemed to embrace her anger.
The first world war saw a lot of refusal towards the war effort by men which made the government afraid due to the futile and indiscriminate slaughter of the British army at the battle of the Somme in 1916 where General Haig's tactics failed to show success which resulted in Britain losing a vast majority of soldiers by 1916. Therefore the government feared that they might lose World War one as well because there a lot of casualties which needed to be replaced and many men were becoming antisocial and refused to join the war, these people were known as conscientious objector or short for C.Os. Some C.Os did not want to fight in the war but were keen to do there bit in the war, so they were willing to help out in weapon factories and go to
A form of adversity is in Alice Walker’s essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, it shows how a person’s perception of everything is always greatly influenced by their past experiences. Walker uses various elements throughout her writing to show her outlook towards her appearance. Walker uses the incident that happened in her childhood to show that a persons mindset can be changed by a experience and how her attitudes changes from a sassy, conceited kid to a matured and powerful women who finally sees beauty in her life. Alice Walker’s essay is a great example of a person whose fear of adversity allowed themselves to be worn down by it. She begins the story with a cocky outlook on life where she knows she is beautiful. “I’m the prettiest!” (Alice Walker), as a young child she would use her
During the late 1800s both China and Japan were suffering from unequal treaties, poverty, civil unrest, and lack of modern technology. Both countries knew that reform was necessary in order to prevent further chaos, but the way each country approached reform varied. China’s attempts to reform were rather unsuccessful, while on the hand japans reforms succeeded in unifying the nation and undoing the unequal treaty system. The reforms that took place in both countries were very complex in nature and received both praise and condemnation from their respective peoples. The reforms goals were to both modernize the countries while at the same time keep traditional values.
The societal expectations for beauty are an ingrained concept amongst the minds of almost every individual, who in turn project these standards on each other and their own children. Throughout her adolescence, Walker seeks for validation of her beauty through others. “When I rise to give my speech I do so on a great wave of love and pride and expectation.” (Walker 2). Walker was seeking a reaction from her audience as she read her Easter speech to her church; a reaction of approval and admiration, which then confirmed her “cuteness”. The emotional toil brought upon by the accident caused Walker to go into a dark place of unacceptance of herself. She did poorly in school, was bullied in school, and kept her head down for several years of her life because of the shame she felt from the appearance of her eye. “I tell it I hate and despise it. I do not pray for sight. I pray for beauty.” (Walker 5). At twelve years-old, Walker talks about the eye that has gone blind and development of her self-unacceptance can be seen here. The lack of concern she had about the function of her eye, but rather the aesthetics, shows how dependent Walker was on in achieving societal standards.
In Alice Walker's "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”, her view of beauty changes through different stages of her life. In her childhood Walker has a misunderstanding of beauty. She is concerned with superficial signs of beauty and fails to appreciate her inner beauty. A tragic mishap as a young child leaves her right eye blind and deformed. She enters a period of depression her life, living her life in shame and disappointment because she believes her beauty to be lost. Even getting surgery as an adult doesn’t help defeat her demons. She continues to struggle until she finds her inner beauty through her daughter’s love. As a child, Alice Walker got her definition of beauty from her family, in her teens she turned to her peers to define beauty, her perception finally changed again in adulthood when she discovered an inner beauty.
Jane has gotten used to cruelty and biased behavior towards her average looks, and develops a miserable self-esteem that believes the only possible way to describe her exterior is “plain”. This self-esteem prevents her from even beginning to recognize that anyone could appreciate her or find her beautiful in any manner. The society’s typical reactions and judgments shaped Jane’s self-esteem, and prevented her from receiving equal treatment as that of a beautiful woman.
Compute the uncollectible account expense, and make the appropriate journal entry, for the current year assuming the uncollectible account expense is determined as follows:
In the beginning of the essay, Walker shares childhood event that help shape her character. She describes how when she was two, she got chosen to go to the fair by her father because of her beauty, “Take me, Daddy, I’m the prettiest” She reveals that she thought people admired and glorified her because “she is the cutest thing”. She felt that everyone “seem to hold their breath” in her presence. “I can tell they admire my dress, but it is my spirt, bordering my sassiness (womanishness), they secretly applaud.” She illistartes that she was also adored because of her personality, which was confident and self-assured until it all changed. “it was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended.” After her accident the doctor said “ Eyes are sympathetic, If one is blind, the other will likely become blind too” which “terrified’ her. Although this was a professional opinion, but it never became true physically but symbolically it showed that she was blind that she didn’t see the positive and beauty in life, which she felt people didn’t see that In herself.
When Alice Walker was eight years old, her brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun in her right eye. She lost the use of that eye and was left with scar tissue that was noticeable. Other kids would ridicule and laugh at her. This caused her to become very withdrawn. She became more of an observer and she started composing poetry in her head. She was afraid to put them on paper because she thought that her siblings would find her writings and tear them up.
Feeling beautiful deals with many factors but it has become incumbent with focus being placed on the physical aspects of person Una Marson writes about beauty and how it drives many women into changing their features and making those features fit into the standard of beauty. Her poem, “Kinky Haired Blues” speaks about that notion, of women wanting to assimilate to what the norm is. Specifically women of ethnic minorities, she talks more about Black Women and the pressure for them to bleach their skin and to iron their hair. Matters such as race are at forefront of the issues in her society and of the society we currently live in today. Una Marson’s poem “Kinky Hair Blues” speaks to the idea of beauty and the standard of beauty. And how many
Together, we can lower the numbers of people dying from eating disorders and cosmetic surgeries by resisting the beauty ideal. We can choose “to not participate in the beauty rituals, to not support the industries that produce both images and products, and to create other definitions of beauty” (WVFV, pg. 232). The most crucial and easiest solution is to create other definitions of beauty. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide what is beautiful. What if someone decided that the only thing that could contribute to one’s beauty is who someone is on the inside? Wouldn’t our world be a completely different place? Instead of