Personal Narrative - Essay Example

Despite the fact that the subject of ridicule on my body was gone, I was not aware of the fact that the ridicule would still continue as I joined school. With the onset of the adolescent stage, many girls in my class started getting curvier, and in my and other people’s opinion prettier yet I still maintained my rather stiff self. This is something that quite disturbed me considering the fact that this was a time when fitting in was quite an issue. Most of my peers were busy getting clothes that flaunted their bodies while I on the other hand quite struggled to dress my skinny self.

This had started affecting me and it was during this difficult time that my father started teaching me a valuable and significant lesson regarding beauty and the power of self confidence. During my childhood, my family always indulged in a weekly ritual that we called family night. We always used this time for various activities and we would hold family councils when we would discuss important subjects. Sometimes we would just play games, watch a movie or take ice cream while talking about moral issues of the time.

There are times when we would get carried away and sing songs while hearing dad’s many stories. It was during one these family times that my dad brought a movie entitled Johnny Lingo for us to watch. In the movie was a shy ten year old girl who had long, stringy brown hair and big brown eyes on a freckled face. One would say that Pillsbury Dough Boy was her closest relative. However, the story was one filled with a lot of hope and in my own world I would say magic. The movie was all set up on an island and was about this girl named Mohana, who was actually quite ugly.

She was all skin and bone and rarely washed or combed her stringy hair. Most of her time was spent on the woods so that no one could see her and make fun of her funny looks. In addition to this she was quite sidelined in her family due to the fact that everyone deemed her ugly. However, one day, a handsome young man named Johnny Lingo came to the Island and asked for Mohana’s hand in marriage. He gave Mohana’s father eight cows as a gift in exchange for Mohana. This was a great demonstration of devotion and love towards Mohana because the standard used to be four cows as a gift to the girl’s family.

A year later Johnny Lingo and Mohana returned to visit the island and people hardly recognized Mohana who was now totally transformed. She now had long, shining beautifully combed hair and had put on some weight. In addition to this, her personality had greatly changed. She was not the same girl that used to hide in the woods so that people would not call her ugly, she seemed to have a lot of self assurance and confidence. Johnny Lingo said that he had bought her a silver and pearl inlaid mirror as well as a comb set and reminded her every day that she was beautiful.

He said that Mohana had always had inner beauty that had not been discovered. I came to realize the significance of this movie years later when fully practicing my modeling career. It had taken me sometime to realize that I had something special that could be used to my advantage. The people around me especially my father who gave me lots of positive reinforcement that helped me get the desirable effects consequently excelling in my career (Redmond & Montedoro, p.1). I had started small by participating in the schools fashion shows and beauty pageants.

Even though most of my peers thought that it was a wild goose