After reading Alice Walker’s Beauty-When the Other Dancer Is the Self, readers
are touched by her experience, her courage and her beauty. Everything becomes unreal
and illusively fades into a dim reflection of a mirror of heart. People begin to muse about
the world and can’t help thinking about what truly beauty is.
So what is beauty anyway? Beauty means pretty and comely things which are
approaching perfect or ideal state in concepts, spirits, scales, distributions, styles, colors,
sounds, etc. and which can make our all manner of senses delightful, pleased and
satisfied. You may have noticed that this version contains not only the definition of
physical aspect, but spiritual one as well. Alice may have no gold and silver on her face,
but she has a treasure deep inside her heart. This treasure inside is more abundant and
enduring than any skin-deep beauty outside. However, in all tales, the more precious a
treasure is, the harder it is to be found. To make this great achievement, you must
overcome your anachronistic and prejudiced concept on beauty. This is also what Alice
Walker wanted to tell us during her article.
For many people, beauty is only a simple Like-It-Or-Not problem, but in fact that
is just a small part of it. Beauty cognition mainly comes from three aspects: hereditary
intuition, environmental identity and self-cultivation.
The first thing that influences our decisions is hereditary intuition. Tracing back
to the ancient age, when peaks of muscles exceeded furrows of brains, a grotesque or
cripple was often considered a looser and hardly have chance to survive. Our heredity
kept this intuition subconsciously. It makes a big impact in our value of beauty. Alice got
her right eye hurt by her brothers in an accident, and it left a disgusting scar on her face.
She was called a monster in school. Namely, she failed this part.
The second one is the effect of environmental identity. Sometimes people keep
away from a certain person just because he or she is different. Incontestably, everyone is
different somewhere. That’s a manifestation of diversity. However, when a guy behaves
strangely in the stuff which other people deem as common sense, he will be kicked out of
the group. This part shapes from nurture, not nature. An infant won’t be frightened by a
human skeleton, but a 4-year-old boy may be. Why? It is because infants’ minds have not
been defiled yet and know nothing about fear. While they grow up, they will be told good
and bad and be influenced by their parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors------anybody
around them. Identity of beauty also changes among different times. China has an old
saying: chubby Huan; slim Yan. Huan and Yan are both one of the famous Beauty Four
in China, while they lived in different dynasties, which had utterly different values of
beauty. Besides, there is almost always a poor one being mocked and bullied in school.
His or her “sacrifice” will satisfy others and improve their unity. Unfortunately, Alice
Walker was the one, and she lost this part.
It seems that fate is making fun with Alice, but please don’t forget there is a third
element------self-cultivation. As the only known creature which has develop conscience,
value and mind on earth, human beings can build up a self-value through themselves.
Such halo of beauty radiates from the heart, and it is universal and more powerful than
the last two. Hereditary intuition admires and admits its power; environmental identity
will be conquered by its charisma. All human beings appreciate this kind of beauty. This
is what Walker found finally, a beauty of her own, also a beauty of all. She won at last.
My personal value of beauty is mainly from my father, who influenced me in all
manner of aspects. He was a great man who had an extremely rational and logical mind.
My father was the second boy of my grandfather, neither the eldest, nor the youngest;
neither the strongest, nor the richest (at fist), whereas all family members acted under his
commands, including my grandparents, my father’s sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws
and their parents. He steered the whole ship all by himself. He could anticipate the stock
and political run without surveying and spying everywhere; he could analyze what others
are thinking. People always said: “Guangwen (my father’s name) is always right.”
When I was a child, I worshiped my father, and did exactly everything he told me,
including how to understand beauty. But it was also my father who told me that I ought to
gather all the attributes and personalities on my own. “That’s indolent,” he said, “to
borrow values from others. I don’t want you to be the same person as me. Look at our
furniture. They are expensive because they are man-made, not machine-made, and
everyone is different, even if they are made by the same craftsman. No collector in this
world will have the exactly same one you have. Likewise, a passenger will never
understand the fun of being a driver.” Little Devin began to seek for his own value of
beauty. Now I read the different kind of book and drink different brand of tea. It is not
because I want to differ from him, it’s because I really like them.
Now, when people say: “Wow, Devin, you write and draw much better than your
father.” I will accept with pleasure because I know my father never intensified his article
writing and had no interest in drawing. I am raised as a different man successfully and
have my own view of beauty.