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

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Alice Walker explores the topic of beauty and what it means to be beautiful in her essay, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is Self.” In the essay, she provides the retelling of her childhood and young adult years during which she had to live with a flaw that ruined her own perception of beauty: a blind, white filmed eye. Within the story, the reader can find details touching on the topic of how outside individuals can make a person view themselves and their self worth. Alice Walker focuses on beauty and how the outside world shapes the vision of perfection
The familiar adage, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” is often said to an individual in order to encourage them and build their self esteem. It means that someone might judge you one …show more content…
Television and other forms of media have a way of portraying a specific image as perfection and that is what the public should strive to reach. They pick models that look similar to each other and keep the representation of other types of looks to a minimum. If one was to pick up a magazine at this moment most of the models would be, what the popular media, considers perfection: tan skin, thin, long legs, and luscious hair. The little representation of any form of diversity skews the “eye of the beholder” into thinking that this is the only way to look. Young teens, mainly female, begin to try to achieve these unrealistic goals set by society and they begin to think lesser of themselves. Ultimately, the common saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” has changed drastically through the decades and can be interpreted in many different ways. The introduction of media into the common population’s lives has caused this phrase to be represented in a different way in how one gets to the definition of beauty. The way individuals perceive themselves is now based on the underlying influence that the media has on the public’s ideal beauty
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