Analysis Of Alice Walker's Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self
Today, people have seen loads of advertisement of beauty and ways young girls can attract men. The closer someone looks it is ironic how most people say everyone is beautiful in their own way. Meanwhile, the people in articles are influencing young teens and adults to look a certain way. The audience needs to acknowledge the problem with not only with race but also gender influenced in beauty standards. The Author Alice Walker passage, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self, expresses her feelings of growing up as an accident disfigures her eye which led her to believe she wasn't beautiful. The accident changed her from a cute, outgoing young girl into a vulnerable girl. Walker felt mortified and self-destructed herself because of the damage
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Walker states, “ Ironically, the girl who was voted most beautiful in our class (and was) was later shot twice through the chest by a male companion, using a “real” gun, while she was pregnant” (Walker 275). The example shows how beauty isn’t all great as people may seem to think. Beauty can cost young girls their lives and the consequences can be quite brutal. Today’s society are still dealing with racism and finding a spot for equality for all as our nation is changing. According to Margaret B. Spencer, a child psychologist, arranged a study whether white and black children are biased towards the light skin. Spencer has mentioned, “We are still living in a society where dark things are devalued and white things are valued” (Spencer). During the study, a dark child was asked to choose between a light or dark skin doll. The child surprisingly had picked the light skin doll and most dark skin would choose the light skin doll. This can bring despair for those children because they would feel different because of their skin color. For instance, a white child was asked their opinion of the dark skin, the child answered back by stating the person with dark skin is bad. This issue, later on, shifts into racism to others of different ethnicity.
The function of beauty mentioned in Walker’s essay is sending the readers to become more self-accepted to themselves. For people to accept themselves for who they are as a person and not to conform themselves to the rest of the world’s standards of beauty. Walker makes the readers think more in-depth about beauty. Beauty can be there is beauty in ourselves and many can not see
Walker states, “ Ironically, the girl who was voted most beautiful in our class (and was) was later shot twice through the chest by a male companion, using a “real” gun, while she was pregnant” (Walker 275). The example shows how beauty isn’t all great as people may seem to think. Beauty can cost young girls their lives and the consequences can be quite brutal. Today’s society are still dealing with racism and finding a spot for equality for all as our nation is changing. According to Margaret B. Spencer, a child psychologist, arranged a study whether white and black children are biased towards the light skin. Spencer has mentioned, “We are still living in a society where dark things are devalued and white things are valued” (Spencer). During the study, a dark child was asked to choose between a light or dark skin doll. The child surprisingly had picked the light skin doll and most dark skin would choose the light skin doll. This can bring despair for those children because they would feel different because of their skin color. For instance, a white child was asked their opinion of the dark skin, the child answered back by stating the person with dark skin is bad. This issue, later on, shifts into racism to others of different ethnicity.
The function of beauty mentioned in Walker’s essay is sending the readers to become more self-accepted to themselves. For people to accept themselves for who they are as a person and not to conform themselves to the rest of the world’s standards of beauty. Walker makes the readers think more in-depth about beauty. Beauty can be there is beauty in ourselves and many can not see