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Beauty standards and how they affect women
Narrative of the bluest eye
Narrative of the bluest eye
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Recommended: Beauty standards and how they affect women
According to Victoria Moran, “As a society, we need to get lots more flexible about what constitutes beauty. It isn’t a particular hair color or a particular body type; it’s the woman who grew the hair and lives in the body.” Society as a whole can be very judgmental and condemning. Interestingly, society has created its own standards of what is considered beautiful. Some people have such a great desire to be accepted into society that they will go through drastic measures in order to fit in. Society’s definition of beauty has the ability to negatively influence the actions taken by adolescents. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola’s self-hatred towards her appearance is portrayed by the harsh society that surrounds her. The novel, …show more content…
The Shirley Temple cup was a symbol of Pecola’s desire to be beautiful. Pecola continuously drank milk out of the cup so she could admire how beautiful Shirley Temple was. “‘...We knew she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face.” (Morrison 23). She saw how much people loved Shirley Temple and wished to be loved that much also. She longed to have light skin, curly, blonde hair, and blue eyes. She believed that if she had blue eyes she would be considered beautiful to society. The harsh society that surrounds her, makes Pecola feel isolated and insecure. According to Jeffrey Buchanan, “Because Pecola fits a shorthand formula for prejudging unattractiveness, she is despised; because she disappears when one looks at cultural standards of value and worth, she is judged, logically, value- and worthless. As a result, she is taunted. She is acted upon rather than felt for. …Hence, Pecola comes to wear her ugliness and worthlessness, for she fails to exist without it, and takes on the role of scapegoat, bearing the blame for all the mistakes and crimes of others who escape responsibility through
In The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove attempts to measure up to the standard of beauty set by the Master Narrative: an ideological truth imposed by those in power. Pecola, persistent in her attempt to reach the convention of beauty, is never fully satisfied with herself, and quickly becomes obsessed in becoming ‘beautiful. Pecola begins to associate beauty with happiness and respect. This infinite pursuit for beauty has extremely destructive effects on Pecola’s self-esteem. By portraying Pecola’s perpetual, unrealistic endeavor to reach society’s standards and how she becomes submissive to these standards, Morrison reveals that one’s life can be overrun by viewing the world solely through the Master Narrative.
Writing her first novel as a female in this time period, Toni Morrison is engulfed in this reality. In her novel, The Bluest Eye, she uses characterization, white superiority, and explores society’s expectation of beauty to expose racial self-contempt as an insidious beast (Janken). Morrison uses the gradual destruction of Cholly’s life, from the outset of that moment in the woods, to show that something as simple as one act of racism can spiral into a disaster of self-hate. Toni Morrison wraps her novel around Pecola, using her to explain that obsession with so-called ugliness slowly leads to madness.
"And Pecola. She hid behind hers. (Ugliness) Concealed, veiled, eclipsed--peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask" (Morrison 39). In the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the main character, Pecola, comes to see herself as ugly. This idea she creates results from her isolation from friends, the community, and ever her family. There are three stages that lead up to Pecola portraying herself as an ugly human being. The three stages that lead to Pecola's realization are her family's outlook toward her, the community members telling her she is ugly, and her actually accepting what the other say or think about her. Each stage progresses into the other to finally reach the last stage and the end of the novel when Pecola eventually has to rely on herself as an imaginary friend so she will have someone to talk to.
In the 1940's as well as present day, the media pushed on society an image of perfection and beauty. This image is many times fake, but the naive cannot deceive, and it can become an icon of beauty. If you do not fall within the image then you are ugly. In the book "The Bluest Eye," we witness the power that the media has on specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The icon of beauty at that point in time is Shirley Temple, a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, "...I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world" (19). Claudia is relating the hatred that she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she has towards girls who are beautiful like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to imply this image she says, "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signsall the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). This idea is repeated repetitively throughout the story, the idea that blue-eyed is beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy. Pecola once goes to purchase some candies called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blue-eyed, blond girl in the wrapper. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels Mary Jane's eyes are pretty and that by eating the candy she feels the love that she has for the girl on the wrapper and she finds herself closer to her (50). The idea pushed by the media that blue eyes are beautiful builds up a strong destructive desire in Pecola.
In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, it provides an extended interpretation of how the “perfect White American” is the current standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of African American women and children, through the messages provided everywhere in their lives. The theme of white superiority is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters, Claudia, Pecola and Frieda, daughters of the MacTeer family. Through the struggles those people have endured, Morrison shows the readers the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and society. xx
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
The tone of the excerpt of The Bluest Eye is a very depressed and serious piece. Toni Morrison develops this tone using diction and figurative language. The excerpt is about a doll and how Toni thinks that dolls are not beautiful and that they are not lovable. The piece gives a very sad tone to the reader facing the real truth about dolls.
In the novel “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison traces a young girl’s story that is being discriminated against because of the pigment of her skin color which makes her ugly and worthless. She thinks that her life would not be difficult, if only her eyes were blue. Many women of color have learned to hate their own bodies because of their skin color, even taking this hatred out on their own children. Pecola, in Morrison’s story desires blue eyes; she believes that everything she is experiencing has to do with the way she looks. To her, having blue eyes will cause people treat her differently. Blue eyes symbolize the beauty and happiness that she sees
The Bluest Eye explores the impact the media has on Pecola and others in her life regarding their appearance and self worth. This control of the media on people’s opinions is evident when Pecola’s close friend, Claudia, describes her views on Shirley Temple, a movie personality. Claudia dislikes Shirley Temple because everyone sees Temple as adorable and Claudia does not understand the obsession. During this time Shirley Temple represented the beauty ideal and Pecola and Claudia’s sister, Frieda, believed that message. For them Shirley Temple was the epitome of beauty, a view Claudia does not buy into because she does not see Shirley Temple as adorable. Pecola’s mother is also obsessed with movies and their portrayal of beautiful women. This obsession was to the point that “She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen.” (pg. 122) It is obvious that this unhealthy habit of comparing beauty was passed down to Pecola because Pecola is always comparing herself to the societal standards of beauty, and in her judgment, she always falls
The Bluest Eye, demonstrates numerous examples of prejudice. Author, Toni Morrison, portrays the ending of The Great Depression and families, particularly those in black communities, faced with economic struggles and poverty. Despite the pressing economic concerns, prejudice is the underlying theme throughout the novel. Vivid, descriptive imagery reveals how social classes were distinguished among Pecola’s community. Segregation and prejudice were displayed between Pecola, her family, community members, and children in her social circles. One prominent example of prejudice is seen when Pecola’s mother displays a preference for her white employer’s children over her own, which furthers Pecola’s feelings of insignicance even with her own mother. Pecola was even beaten by her mother in front of the “little white girl.” Pecola’s mother understood the supremacy of the white family, and the enjoyment and comfort she received motivated her to jeopardize and damage her relationship with her own flesh and
A reader might easily conclude that the most prominent social issue presented in The Bluest Eye is that of racism, but more important issues lie beneath the surface. Pecola experiences damage from her abusive and negligent parents. The reader is told that even Pecola's mother thought she was ugly from the time of birth. Pecola's negativity may have initially been caused by her family's failure to provide her with identity, love, security, and socialization, ail which are essential for any child's development (Samuels 13). Pecola's parents are able only to give her a childhood of limited possibilities. She struggles to find herself in infertile soil, leading to the analysis of a life of sterility (13). Like the marigolds planted that year, Pecola never grew.
Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by the mass media contribute to the status at which young African American girls find themselves early on and throughout their lives.
In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she exposes the suffering produced by the problems caused by gender and race oppression through the experiences of African-American children. During the 1940’s, the United States had composed an identity through mass media with books such as “Dick and Jane”, and movies like “Sherley Temple.” These media sources provided a society based on national innocence. In the novel, Morrison relates to and exposes the very real issues that were hidden by the idea of the stereotypical white middle-class family.
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and the brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with, and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when it concerns gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society.
She believes that if she could have blue eyes, their beauty would inspire kind behavior from others. Blues eyes in Pecola’s definition, is the pure definition of beauty. But beauty in the sense that if she had them she would see things differently. But within the world that Pecola lives in the color of one’s eye, and skin heavily influences their treatment. So her desperation for wanting to change her appearance on the account of her environment and culture seems child-like but it is logical. If Pecola could alter her appearance she would alter her influence and treatment toward and from others. In this Morrison uses Marxism as a way to justify Pecola’s change in reality depending on her appearance. The white ideologies reflected upon Pecola’s internal and external conflicts which allowed her to imagine herself a different life. The impacts of one’s social class also impacts one’s perspective of their race. The vulnerability created by the low social class allows racism to protrude in society and have a detrimental effect for the young black girls in “The Bluest Eye” (Tinsley).The quotes explained above express the social and economic aspect of the Marxist theory. The theory that centers around the separation of social classes and the relationship surrounding them not one’s internalization of oneself