At the beginning of the story, Connie is proud of her beauty and seems to value herself largely according to the way she looks. She doesn't appear to be aware that there is any value outside of her beauty: "she knew she was pretty and that was everything." She is very self-conscious ("she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors"), and despite her beauty—or, perhaps, because of it—she doesn't quite yet know how to carry her own body. Her gestures are a little awkward and a little affected. She is, in short, acutely aware that her beauty is hers to possess, but still too young and too naïve to know how to carry it.

By the end of the story, Connie doesn't feel like her body, or her beauty, is hers anymore: "She thought for the first time in her life that . . . this body . . . wasn't really hers." It is as if the strange and creepy Arnold Friend has taken it from her. It is explicitly her body, and her beauty, that he has come for ("I'll hold you so tight you won't think you have to try to get away") and Connie, perhaps not understanding that she has a value and a strength separate from her body, seems powerless to stop him from taking it.

The primary change can be seen by looking at the very start and very end of the story. At the start of the story, Connie knows she is pretty, and she experiences this as validation and power. After all, "she knew she was pretty and that was everything." At the end of the story, her beauty is vulnerability. It is what has drawn Arnold Friend to her, and may kill her and her family. Therefore, her beauty and the change in her relationship to it is very much tied in to the themes of the story.