Ugly Duckling Quotes

Benjamin Hoff once stated, “In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something special, a swan of some sort, hidden somewhere inside. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water?” (Goodreads). In the book Wintergirls, Lia struggles with how the world views her and how she views herself as the ugly duckling. She is made out to be the ugly duckling by her dance teacher when her solo is taken away. When she addresses this by starving herself, she only succeeds in making her situation worse. Lia also has whispers in her head telling her cruel things. They tell her that she is ugly and will never be a swan. Desperate

Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it,” (Anderson 220). This quote shows how Lia is addressing her struggle with self-worth by starving herself because she is taking the whispers’ advice. Since she does not want to be fat and ugly, she starves herself, hoping that once she gets to a certain weight she will finally be happy with her self-worth. This is not an effective way to address this struggle because she is harming her physical health to boost her mental health. In addition to this, she has admitted that losing weight has not and will not make her happier, not unless she weighs 0 pounds, which is physically impossible. Lia struggles with her self-worth in the book Wintergirls. Lia struggles with how the world views her and how she views herself as an ugly duckling and addresses it by starving herself. This first struggle Lia faces is body expectations, evidenced by her dance teacher's judgment of her body. Lia’s attempt to address this struggle with body expectations was unsuccessful because her solution was starving herself slowly and it destroyed her body. She was also unsuccessful in silencing her whispers. Lia tried to listen to them by starving herself, but found that trying to please them did not