Alice Walker's Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is Self

What does it mean to be beautiful? This is a question that has been discussed centuries on end and the answer has evolved through time. In Alice Walker's, “Beauty: When the other dancer is self”, we see Walker struggle with defining what beauty is after a tragic accident forces her to reevaluate. Walker’s journey to self-acceptance allows us to see the effects of beauty, as it dispels the notion that beauty is skin deep. In the beginning of “Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is Self”, Walker is at the height of her self-confidence. She knew she as cute and reaped all the benefits that came along with it. Subject to young Alice’s cuteness, she receives special treatment. Her cuteness was met with compliments,”Oh isn’t she the cutest thing!” and trips to the fair, unlike her “Unlucky” siblings. Walker highlights the importance of her own beauty by showing the aftereffects of her fall from grace. After she loses sight in her right eye due to one of her brother’s sealed its fate with a kiss from a bb gun bullet, Walker is left with white tissue in place of her pupil. The scare scar tissue formed a white bob causing Alice to worry that people would stare at the blob instead of the cute little girl she was once was. This resulted in Alice decided to “not stare at anyone” and “not raise [her] head” for six years. Additionally, we see a shift in
She teaches us that self-acceptance is the real beauty and beauty is more than skin: beauty is a movement, it’s a feeling, it’s self-acceptance and it is important even though many don’t believe it should be. Alice’s journey to self-acceptance is an important one because it doesn’t end with “my daughter thinks my eye is beautiful so I’ll never be self-conscious of it ever again”, it ends with a powerful notion that even when we accept our flaws we must remind ourselves why we have accepted them and that self-acceptance is a work in