Nine-year-old Alicia Quentin watched her reflection in the mirror. First she met her own gaze. Then her eyes wandered. They settled on one tightly coiled strand of hair. A single drop of water slid down from it until it landed on her towel. Her small brown hand reached up and pulled at the curl. She watched as the hair slowly became longer as she pulled it away from her face. 

Alicia was happy at how long her hair had grown. What would it look like if it were straight? She brought the strand of hair closer to her face and pulled it downward to see how long it had grown. But before she could tell, the tight coil slipped from her fingertips and snapped all the way up to her forehead. 

Frustration settled inside her. Now she looked at herself in the mirror again, this time seeing her whole head of hair. An annoyed groan came from her throat. As she tried to avert her eyes, her gaze settled on a magazine cover to her left. 

The woman on the cover was gorgeous. Alicia was instantly intrigued by the glow of her smooth, fair skin. It seemed so bright—so perfect. The woman’s eyes were so blue that they looked as though they’d captured the ocean’s depth. The woman's hair was long and shiny. It framed her face in dark, straight lines. 

The magazine cover read, “The Most Beautiful Woman in America.” 

After a long moment, Alicia’s gaze went back to her reflection. She watched her dripping hair again, seeing how the water created a gloss around each coiled strand. Suddenly Alicia’s eyes burned with tears. Her hair was wrong. So was her skin. And so were her eyes. Everything about her was all wrong. 

One small tear left a trail as it slid down Alicia’s face. If that woman was the most beautiful woman in America, then Alicia would never be beautiful. 

“Please line up in an orderly fashion,” Mrs. Stanley’s voice called out through the gymnasium. Her voice was deep from years of smoking. She stood in the center of the gym and ran a hand through her short, straight hair. 

About forty middle schoolers lined up to audition for the musical. Alicia, now thirteen-years-old, watched the line from where she stood. She anxiously twiddled her thumbs. She could do this. She loved singing, after all, and she wasn’t bad at acting. Her fellow eighth-graders told her that she was a shoo-in for the lead role. Maybe they were right. 

When it was Alicia’s turn, Mrs. Stanley smiled at her briefly and handed her a piece of paper. “Hi, sweetie. If you don’t know the words, just read the lyrics on this paper.” Then Mrs. Stanley stood back to allow Alicia to sing. 

As her audition came to an end, Alicia grew more anxious. She returned to the back of the gymnasium. Others standing around her told her how great she’d been. She smiled, feeling her anxiety slowly disappear with their compliments. 

Twenty minutes later, auditions ended. Mrs. Stanley returned to the center of the gym and clapped her hands together. “Thank you, everyone, for your incredible auditions! The cast list will be up by Friday.” 

That Friday took forever to come. But when it finally did, Alicia’s nerves had returned. She couldn’t wait until school was over. She could hardly focus on anything else for the whole day. When 2:45pm hit, Alicia was one of the first to head to the gym. 

She reached the tiny crowd that surrounded the paper, trying to calm her beating heart. She’d be fine, she told herself. Whatever happened, she’d be fine. 

But when she saw who had gotten the lead role, she didn’t feel fine. She felt inadequate. It was like she was seven years old all over again—and not good enough. Suddenly, Alicia understood why she hadn’t gotten the role. 

She looked over at the girl who’d gotten the role. It was the girl who couldn’t sing very well, and who was too shy to act in front of people. This girl had fair skin and long straight hair. She looked just like the girl in the original movie, from which the musical had been adapted. She also looked just like the woman in the magazine. 

Alicia smiled sadly. 

 “Congratulations,” Alicia told the girl. 

Her heart sank with every syllable. And two months later when Mrs. Stanley asked Alicia if she would sing for the girl backstage while the girl lip-synched the songs, Alicia’s heart sank even further. 

Now Alicia knew. That was all she would ever be. She wasn’t enough. Someone like her was meant to be in the background. Because just as Mrs. Stanley had later told her, Alicia “didn’t quite fit” the role, and she never could. 

On the first day of junior year, sixteen-year-old Alicia felt at ease. She sat in her father’s car on the way to school, her phone in her right hand. Laid-back, Alicia scrolled through her news feed. She smiled at a funny picture and continued on to the next one.  

Suddenly, Alicia received a direct message from a friend. When she tapped it, a new image came up on the screen. The image instantly caught Alicia’s eye, and she paused to take it in completely. It was a picture of a girl. But this time, the girl didn’t have long, straight hair. She didn’t have blue eyes that looked like the ocean. No, this time the girl had dark skin and eyes that looked like molten chocolate. Her hair was cut all the way down to her head, and tiny little strands of coiled hair emerged from her scalp. Her smile was so radiant that it glowed brighter than any light Alicia had ever seen. 

This, Alicia thought to herself, is the most beautiful woman in America. 

Alicia gazed at the picture for a long time, and she found herself thinking back to that day of the audition, nine years ago. That day she’d cried about not being beautiful because she would never look like the woman in the magazine. Now, Alicia couldn’t help but think about beauty. 

What was beauty, really?