Everyone at one time or another worries about how other people view them. Alice Walker the author of "Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self" did that to the extent that she couldn't funcion for a lon time. An older brother had shot her in the eye with a "BB" gun. It left a horrible visible scar that repulsed her. She went from good grades in school to struggling to stay afloat. At one time she adored the public eye and wanted nothing more than to be in it. Up until the acident she craves attention and adoration.
After the accident she began to shut herself off. She had trouble making friends, eye contact, and felt that the people around her viewed her as a monster because of the scar that was left on her eye. She even felt that the scar hindered her relationship with her father. Instead of realizing that she was pushing him away, she blamed herself for being ugly. Alice Walker felt like her father didn't love her as much because she wasn't as pretty.
After years of dealing with internal ridicule the scar was surgically removed. Alice Walker went on to do bettter in school, open up to people, and eventually married and had a child. Women have a way of redefining themselves after the birth of a child and Alice Walker was no exception. When her daughter was old enough to talk, she reached up and touched her mother's face and asked about the world in her eye.
These actions were symbolic on many levels. A daughter does see the world in her mother's eyes, and Alice's daughter took some of her mother's pain away. After the acceptance of her own child, Alice was more at ease with her eye and let some of her angst about the way that other's viewed it go.
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