Alice Walker's
Children are the seeds of humankind and need to flourish through the direction of their parents. Therefore we often find that children view the world through inexperienced eyes, while adults view it through experienced eyes. The way beauty is perceived differs from person to person, and a person’s perception of beauty can be changed through experience, and could end up being what shapes them. In Alice Walker’s terse story “Beauty When The Other Dancer is The Self,” we are introduced to a character who was brought up in a society that placed beauty higher than everything else. This character happens to be Alice Walker herself. While growing up, Alice Walker was taught that beautiful people received more attention in life because they were widely recognized and cherished. The truth of this was proven to her when she “lost her beauty.” Walker’s way of thinking took a drastic turn in another direction when she no longer saw herself as beautiful. Being used to phrases such as “She’s so cute,” Alice Walker was shaped into a commodity. She remembered when she was younger, everyone called her beautiful and she totally loved the attention. She says, “It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended.” Ended indeed, but no . . .
She learned to accept herself as “beautiful” when, one day, her daughter said to her, “mom you have a world in your eye. No one pointed and called out “she’s so cute” anymore. She realized that no one accepted her the way they used to, because she lost the “beauty” she possessed. It seemed to her that all she possessed was beauty, and when that was taken away, she thought she had no other qualities. If you lose the attention, you view the world in a totally different manner. Alice Walker went through a lot of pain because she was teased a lot. We also saw that the idea of beauty implanted into Walker’s life as a child flourished into a new and broader understanding and meaning. So when Alice Walker thought back to a time when she was idolized and lionized, and looked at her present situation, she saw the world differently and “prayed for beauty, not for sight. Walker’s attitude toward beauty differed from the beginning to the end of the succinct story, and her experiences portrayed throughout the story changed her attitude, because she had a new way of viewing life without its insecurities. A child could be thought of as someone who experiences. ” So at that moment when her father did not play with her, she saw that she had lost a part of her that could never be the same. This was a heavy burden for a child to carry, and a hard fact to consume. There was no way of understanding what was happening to her at such a young age as eight years old. In conclusion, a person’s perception of beauty can be changed through experience. In this concise story the child was the teacher, the “adult.
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