Sandra's Reflection on Alice Walker: Beauty When The Dancer Is Self

I really liked this piece because it shows how insecure and paranoid a person can be. When Alice was younger, she was the typical "daddy's little girl" who admired her father and enjoyed cute girly material things. She was like most girls who were somewhat spoiled and thought they were the prettiest in their fathers eye. Later she becomes a tomboy and feels that this transition led up to the accident that made her feel not so pretty anymore. I think that whether she became a tomboy or not, the inccident with her brother shooting her eye with a shotgun would have been inevitable.

I find it odd that she would pray for beauty instead of her eye. In that situation where you are blind in one eye, can a person really be that shallow? I think this is what most girls would also pray for because they are afraid that people will be judgemental but later they meet people who accept them for who they are. I also don't think that the procedure helped boost her confidence to make friends. I think she's always been confident but she was just afraid of rejection. I think that Alice was so obssesed with beauty and the way her eye looked because she thought that her father only chose Alice to bring to the carnival and only liked her because she was the prettiest girl. I think that was the relationship Alice and her father had.
Although the event of her getting shot while she was pregnant had nothing to do with the story, I wish Alice would go into detail about it. The last part of the story where Alice tells about the photoshoot and literary magazine she's featured in is so touching because she's so worried that she won't get enough sleep and her eye will look lazy. Yet when Alice goes into her three year old daughters room, her daughter finally realizes her mom's eye and asks how her mother got the world in her eye instead of being like most children who would have poked fun. I like how Alice realizes that her eye is a part of her at that point and the photoshoot doesn't seem to bother her anymore. I love the part where Alice dances to Stevie Wonder who is ironically blind.

I can relate to why Alice became so insecure about her eye and why she would be paranoid about people looking at her eye constantly because every girl has plenty of imperfections, but i think that the inccident did not change how beautiful she was nor her personality. It might have helped her gain a stronger will, but even with her eye looking a little lazy she managed to find herself a husband, a sweet daughter, and a writing career.