Beauty Embraced
My Thoughts on Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”
In "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self,” Walker’s focus was mainly on her life experiences, growing up as a child who assumed beauty was more outward than inward, until she experienced a tragic eye injury which changed her perspective and outlook on life. “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is Self, “speaks about the true meaning of beauty and its humanity. Although her story was a lesson on inner and outer beauty, her title insinuated something more.
In Walker’s title, she not only mentions the word “Beauty," but she mentions a statement, “When the Other Dancer is Self”. The word dancer appears to have more meaning than the art of dancing as we know it. Perhaps she was saying that no matter what moves we make in life, our experience will be our own; therefore, we must learn to love dancing with ourselves. What better person to define beauty than its beholder. When we allow outside influences to define what is beautiful about us, as Walker did in the very beginning of her story, we begin to struggle with the true meaning of beauty. Walker's tragic eye injury taught her a valuable lesson about relying on physical beauty. In life, we will all experience physical changes, but can we still see the beauty in our changes, as Walker did?
Walker’s title also sends a message about beauty, which focuses directly on one’s personal life experiences. In life, everyone will experience a combination of highs and lows. Good and bad things will happen to us all. That’s a part of being human. In Walker's case, the bad thing that happened to her was her eye injury. It was an experience that changed her life forever. She no longer saw herself as that beautiful two-year-old girl, all dolled up in a beautiful dress for her dad to take to the country fair, and she couldn’t imagine herself again, as that sassy young vibrant six-year-old, who recited the longest poem on a Easter Sunday, at church. Her personal life experiences robbed her of a beauty she once had. How many times, we ourselves have allowed one experience, to change our entire lives?
Walker’s title implies that beauty is society-driven when it ought to be self-driven. Society gives a false perception that beauty has little to do with self-acceptance and everything to do with external perfections. It gives an illusion we have to be concerned about the things we lack, rather than appreciate the things we have. Beauty is not perfection. In fact, our greatest examples of beauty are human beings and nature, and neither of these are perfect. When we compare ourselves to society standards, are we comparing ourselves to something that does not exist?
Walker’s title was one of embrace, because beauty is self-embraced. In the essay, Walker shares a moment where her daughter looks into her eye. “Mommy, there’s a world in your eye.” This was a turnaround moment for Walker. At first, I did not fully understand why, until I gave more thought to the word “World”. The world we live in is far from perfect, but who would say the world is not beautiful? When Walker’s daughter saw that there was something different about her eye, she called it a world. If we can learn to see our differences as strengths rather than weaknesses, we will begin to see what is beautiful about the world. That is what Walker’s daughter saw. She saw what was different about her mom. To her it resembled a world, but to Walker it resembled "her" world, and all she had gone through in life. Although beauty should be more of how we see ourselves rather than how others see us, it was Walker’s daughter who made her embrace her beauty again, and see beauty from a broader perspective.
Walker’s overall message, through her title and experience with her daughter, was to recognize the differences, difficulties and disappointments, and still see beauty. In spite of imperfections, there is something beautiful about us all, which overshadows life's imperfections. We think this way already about life. No matter how imperfect life can be, we still don't want life to be taken from us. Just like life, in spite of our imperfections, there's still something beautiful about being a human being. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. We define what we want to call beautiful. Every time the word beauty is used, it should be evaluated by self, embracing the good, the bad and the ugly.
