Post B

¨My sister and I both have big lips. Tackie lips is what the other children call them.[...] I wouldn´t mind getting my lips chopped off, or at least down a size or two[...] I wouldn´t be teased by the other children.¨ People from different cultures have similar features. Like in Germany, people have blue eyes, and have beautiful pale skin. In Korea, the people have higher cheekbones and slanted eyes. The point is that people have different kinds of beauty. Some may not see it as beauty, but rather as a difference. In this quote Alexandra is feeling self-conscience of her lips. The other African children are teasing her, and consequently Bobo wants to change the way she looks. When people point out features of another and make a remark in favor of disgust rather than beauty, most will do anything to change the way one looks. Alexandra wants to cut her lips off, rather than ignore the children, and believe her feature is beautiful. It isn´t easy to ignore those types of comments, especially when it comes from people one has to see daily. In this chapter Bobo´s mom tries to tell her that to have full lips is a good thing She tells Bobo that a famous French actress named Brigitte Bardot has full lips, and everyone thinks she is beautiful. Bobo ignores this because Bardot is in France and not in Africa where she is being made fun of for having full lips. When one moves to another culture, where people have similar features as one another, but not similar to the one that has moved, it is sometimes difficult to feel like one fits in. Due to all the prejudices in the world no one person can completely fit into another culture besides their own. It isn´t always that it is the other culture that looks down upon you for joining them, but rather outside cultures who judge you based on the fact you aren´t with your similar racial culture. There are people who believe that everyone should look alike, and if not, they should be sent away(Hitler). If everyone in the world looked alike there would be no such thing as individuality, which in my opinion makes a person very attractive. It gives them another quality that no one else has. I believe that you can never see the same thing twice. One might see a pair of twins, but they would have different personalities or interests. You might visit a lake one year, but if you visit it the same time next year, leaves will have shifted, or there may be new animals that have moved in, ect. One should learn to enjoy this quality thats separates us from the rest of the world. If we ourselves can´t learn to enjoy, then who can? I have grown to love the people around me for their unique qualities. Each one provides me with something that I can´t find in another person. Whether they are a person I dislike, or one of my closest friends, they make my life interesting. They show me that if they can accept their own unique quality, then so can I. I owe it to them to make their life more interesting. The saying goes as followed, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.