The Relationship between the Self and Beauty - Essay Example

28 October Moment of Destiny: Beauty in the Self-Made “Self” Close your eyes and think about the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. Does she have a pair of shiny blue eyes, blond waving hair, and a trim figure? Does she look like Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, or Scarlett Johansson? In today’s society, the word ‘beauty’ is defined narrowly as looking good, fancy, and flawless. Alice Walker, however, in her autobiographic essay “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self” convinces her readers with her own story of a transformation from being inferior to confident after becoming blind in one eye. She continues by proclaiming another form of beauty, which is the inner beauty of self-recognition, self-fulfillment, and self-esteem. With these characteristics, a woman will always be “beautiful, whole, and free” (Walker 255), no matter what physical imperfections she may have. The beauty of a woman is multi-dimensional, combining the tradition aesthetic notions of attractiveness and inner self-realization with a soul pursuing her most innermost desires and dream in life. Beauty is a complex word with numerous, often conflicting, definitions. When connected to inner beauty, however, it results in a process of actualizing one’s identity by realizing one’s value. Walker first emphasizes the outer beauty. For the photographer, this is the beauty of what a photo can capture and for the artist; it is the beauty that can only be seen by the eyes when a picture is drawn. For the writer, just like most women, regardless of her age or ethnicity, to be beautiful is one of most important aspects of her life. After being blinded at a young age, Walker was so depressed about her eye, not because of her loss of vision, but because of the perceived blemish to her beauty. She was not strong enough to accept the fact that she was no longer the “cutest thing” in “biscuit-polished paten-leather shoes and lavender socks, tossing [her] head in a way that makers [her] ribbons bounce”, but instead the girl with “a glob of whitish scar tissue, a hideous cataract on [her] eye” (Walker 251, 253). She “[did] not pray for sight,” she “[prayed] for beauty” (Walker 254). She became lost inside herself. She did not find her true identity at first because she thought that her identity, or the ‘self’, was defined by how she looked. The relationship between the ‘self’ and beauty cannot be described without being conscious of one’s weaknesses and strengths. For a long time, Walker only saw her own weaknesses and used that as a basis for defining the roots of her own identity. At one point, her doctor stated, “If one is blind, the other will likely become blind too”, providing a metaphor for her mental breakdown along with her physical trauma (Walker 252). She thought that her life was ruined because her beauty was gone and all her identity and meaning came from her outer attractiveness. If she perceives herself as ugly, then her future must be ugly as well. A surgery that removed her glob was the first step towards her regaining confidence in terms of her outer beauty. She writes that she did not feel as ugly as before because she could finally look up as a normal person, rather than keeping her head down to avoid eye contact with others. The ultimate transformation of her attitude towards the relationship between the loss of her eyesight and her outer beauty occurred as a result of something her own daughter mentioned. She pointed to the ‘world’ through her own eyes. By understanding the words of her daughter, Walker became aware that it was up to her how she perceived the world. She could eliminate the feelings of inferiority and her perception of beauty if she would only begin to revaluate the true nature of these same feelings. The world, her daughter pointed out, is surely not as black and white as Walker was making it out to be. Towards the end of her essay, Walker writes how she had rebuilt her confidence because she truly did begin to see the ‘world’ through her own eye. This is to say that she finally discovered her inner beauty by noticing that her value and identity was realized through her writing and motherhood, not through beauty alone. She began to fill herself with self-recognition and self-realization. Her perspective changed when she found her ‘self’ in imaginary dancing, “happier than [she had] been in [her] life”. This became a metaphor that related the expression of her beauty in motherhood and writing, both concepts that helped her reclaim her lost self-esteem (Walker 255). This particular essay reminds me of the time I tried to lose weight after being obese as a side effect of asthma pills. I went through a period of time of self-abandonment, looking for my only relief in gulping, chewing, and swallowing. After realizing how ‘fat’, ‘ugly’, and ‘dumb’ I was, I started to starve myself, counting the calorie and fat in every single bite of my meals. To avoid the oily cafeteria lunch, I started to cook healthy dishes. Gradually, I became obsessed with healthy cooking and nutritional knowledge, while spending hours upon hours on academic websites related to my eating issues. One year later my body weight finally dropped within the standard zone. I lost 25 kilograms. The moment I saw a pretty girl in the mirror, I did not get the satisfaction and happiness that I expected. Instead, I began to feel much more confident and motivated when holding a chef’s knife in my kitchen. I remember watching the television program “daily Cook” at 7 pm every night and being amazed that the food never seemed as oily as the food served in restaurants. Over time, this built a foundation whereby my own cooking skills began to dramatically improve. The way I approach cooking today makes me mindful of the lessons learned from my exposure to nutritional science. I believe that the essence of cooking is not simply mixing raw materials until they are edible, but it lies in creating a healthy balance between nutrition and taste. This involves combining nutrients like calcium, potassium, and iron with sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors. The moment I cut my fruits and vegetables and turned them into an awesomely filling and delicious shake, I began to taste the recipe for success in my own life. This ‘recipe’ turned into the sum of my skills and dreams, and resulted in the beauty and identity I had always been looking for. When Walker looked at the beautiful dancer and recognized herself, I knew that I had reached that same stage as well. I turned out to be pretty and skinny and, most importantly, I filled my inner soul with nutrition knowledge and a healthy lifestyle. I no longer look at beauty as being judged by people based upon my body shape or facial features, but rather on my own identity consisting of a healthy, confident, and positive girl pursing nutritional knowledge. The process of losing this weight has turned out to be a process of finding my ‘self’. When I consider this complex notion of beauty, I consider many version of 20th century art. Oftentimes, works of art, such as those by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack, or Michel Basquiat were derided at first for begin amateurish or non-artistic. In this same way, I recognize that society attached the same aesthetic standards of beauty to these works that it attached to beauty in people: symmetric, gorgeous, and delicate. For example, many people fail to understand Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Fig. 1). This particular painting is so profound that, at first glance, it tends to shock many viewers. Initial comments tend to often center on a painting that is so explicit and obscene that it contradicts social norms. Many art connoisseurs’ fail to see any great ambiance in this painting and refuse to consider it to be aesthetically pleasing. I believe that these perspectives on the work, however, are parallel to much of society’s perceptions about beauty. Namely, society merely resorts to traditional aesthetic standards of recognition, rather than spending the time required to understand a person’s true identity or self. What is true beauty? Is beauty truly as society claims it to be, or is there a much deeper meaning that? These are the questions that Picasso seems to be asking with his rather non-traditional approach to the female shape in his painting. With this particular painting, then, there is the recognition that Picasso is actually exploring multiple perspectives on reality through his use of non-confirmative faces. As part of this deeper meaning, Picasso’s painting makes us realize that beauty is often based on perspective, rather than on reality. Picasso is quite remarkable because he insisted on his own artistic license. He did not worry about how people around him opposed and abused his work. In the end, many people finally did recognize the inner meaning of his paintings. In a similar fashion, artists and writers have gone through similar periods of self-reflection and self-actualization throughout the ages. Through their work, life is reflected in such a manner that requires time to dissect and to truly understand. When this is accomplished, beauty and the very essence of our existence can be uncovered. Walker is such a writer who underwent a time of deep reflection that resulted in a deeper appreciation of her struggles and pain. At first, she was so depressed about the decline in her outer beauty because she got the impression that all of her pride and popularity resulted from it. Indeed, she was praised as the ‘prettiest thing’, but never the ‘smartest girl’. It was the pressure bestowed on her by society, and the atmosphere surrounding her, that told her that her identity and purpose came from her outer beauty. She regained her confidence because she finally realized what truly made up her identity. Similarly, Picasso’s paintings reflect this as well. Too many people see the world in black and white. In reality, we must deal in the abstract. Picasso examined the world in such a fashion and reflected the beauty of our natural world in seeming obscene and explicit ways. Like Walker and Picasso, we must often view ourselves in a much deeper fashion in order to get to the core of our true being. We must drown out the voices of society that tell us what beauty is, and we must decide for ourselves what makes us each beautiful in our own way. Fig. 1 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon In her essay, “On Seeing England for the First Time”, Jamaica Kincaid further examines this relationship between obedience and rebellion of social judgment. Her country had been colonized by England for quite some time. As a result, many of the people became brainwashed by a consensus that England was the most elegant and superior country in the world. She expressed her disgust of the foolish admiration of England and pointed out that simply obeying the views of society would further enslave the people’s minds. Her mind, however, became enslaved by her judgment towards the other extreme, that being a total denial and rebellion against the social view because of her shame and hatred towards England as her country’s colonizer. Everything appeared superior and holy once related to England. She wrote, “[even the map is] a shading of pink and green, unlike any shadings of pink and green [she] had seen before” (Kincaid 720). In an effort to gain clarification and to get a sense for her claims, members of society asked her to draw a new map more fitting to how she believed it should be. Each time this request was made, however, she saw the people as being antagonistic towards her, even claiming that they had made a “declaration of war on [her]” (Kincaid 721). Such request made of her, according to her essay, simply reminded her of the fact that she was living in a colonized country. Feelings of inferiority seemed to pervade her being, and she blamed these feelings on societal pressures. These pressures, she wrote, stemmed from the fact that England claimed to be the superior people group, leaving her own people to struggle to find their own self-worth. Not everyone agreed with her of course, but the point is valid. When a person, or people, are told that are they are not ‘good enough’ or ‘beautiful enough’, they will struggle with a negative perception of themselves. Through her story, I learned that one should always listen to opposing viewpoints, while still holding fast to what they believe to be true and right. They do not have to revert to either extreme. I do not deny the existence of outward aesthetics by society. In fact, I accept the general view of beauty. Like most, I put on makeup and dress nicely each morning. I admit that I am not the most beautiful girl in terms of outward appearances. I have, however, found my own ultimate beauty in my inner soul. I realize that what shapes me to be ‘me’ are not the shallow outward elements, but finding my real interest. For me, these interests have centered on nutrition and my dedication towards the realization of my value in life. I discovered my inner beauty through exploring the essence of nutrition, and I demonstrated it with fine-tuning my cooking skills and through my own physical and mental wellness. Today, nobody can crush my beauty. Nobody can crust my identity. This means that I have no longer let obesity, pimples, scars, and a host of other physical imperfections determine my relative worth. I am beautiful and that is all that counts. Looking back on Walker’s story, I can see how various events in her life allowed her to be twirled and eventually to discover true beauty. In a similar way, I cut, measured, mixed, and cooked my way towards stumbling onto mine. Ultimately, it is clear that beauty is a complex concept that is tied into the very foundation of human epistemology. Walker, Picasso, and Kincaid all provide unique perspectives on the role that society plays in determining our relative self-worth. Walker, through a period of self-reflection, eventually cast out the ideas and thoughts that society had bombarded her with about her own beauty. She came to the conclusion that beauty is more than what is on the outside and that society had been misleading her for many years. Picasso used his art to demonstrate to society that their perceptions of outer beauty were perhaps misguided and that they needed to consider a more abstract approach. Finally, Kincaid demonstrated the power that societal views can hold over a person. A country being colonized and its citizens being made to feel inferior is similar to the grip that society holds over us in terms of our beauty. When people are screaming at us that our bodies must look a certain way in order to be beautiful, we can become trapped in feelings of inadequacy, no matter how we truly look. It is up to us, then, to discount these views and to learn to look within for guidance and true worth. One’s identity can never be described by a single word. It is everything about that person: the physical and intellectual, the defective and the perfect, the imaginary and the realistic, the past, present, and future aspects, all merging together to form a person’s identity. Identity is something worth fighting for. It takes a person’s intelligence, effort, knowledge, and inner strength to determine their true value. Beauty is not simply outside for society to confirm, but it comes from within. It comes from self-validation. In this way, humanity must recognize that beauty is not an objective sort of reality, but an ever-changing entity that is based on the determination and essence emanating deep from within. Works Cited Kincaid, Jamaica. (Date). “On Seeing England for the First Time.” Retrieved from Walker, Alice. (Date). “When the Other Dancer is the Self.” Retrieved from Read More