"Hey Kim I love your hair! Jen where did you get that outfit it looks great on you!" These are only some of the positive comments given to us by people in our society. As human beings we naturally take things for granted. Comments of beauty or praise for example, are often taken for granted on a daily basis. For Lucy Grealy and Alice Walker comments like these are heaven sent. These two women have something in common. They both walk around hanging their heads in public, hiding themselves from society because of the severity of there deformed appearances. Both Lucy Grealy and Alice Walker have experienced a lifetime of pain and suffering, and both have written essays to tell the world about it. In essay's "Mirrors" by Lucy Grealy and "Beauty" by Alice Walker both women suffer from similar disfigurement on their faces, they both encounter similar struggles and obstacles because of there appearance. These women live life in a similar manner due to communal rejection, but at the same time they make different decisions about how they live there lives. .
All children experience teasing at one point in there lives, but at a certain point we all grow out of these childish ways and learn to accept everyone for who they are. Unfortunately for unfortunate people like Grealy and Walker the torment continues on past childhood through the rest of their lives. In the essay "Beauty" Walker points out an incident where she had to undergo abuse when a huddle group of children inquire, "What's the matter with your eye? They asked, critically When I don't answer, they shove me, insist on a fight" (45). Here she emphasizes "critically" meaning that her past experiences with people when asked questions like these, have been to basically point, laugh and stare as people do to things they find out of the ordinary. As stated before, this cruelty did not end for Walker, or Grealy. This cruelty is also evident in Grealy's essay when she refers to a similar occurrence to that of Walkers when she states, "sometimes, from a distance, men would see the long blond hair and whistle I knew as they got closer their tone would inevitably change" (57).