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How do we decide who is attractive and who is not? Society is full of information telling us what is beautiful, but what fact is that information based on? The topic of beauty has been studied, analyzed, and controversial for centuries. We all know the feeling you can have when our eyes admire a visually pleasing face. Beauty plays a big part in the novel The Bluest Eye, where characters were subjective of their looks and style corresponding to society. In the The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a significant theme of physical beauty is expressed throughout the novel.
For it proves that the notion of physical beauty dominate affects the self-esteem in many of the various characters. Morrison tells the story of a young African American, Pecola, and the social struggles of the time period, including the difficulties of growing up as a young black woman in the 1940s.
In this novel, the upper class creates a standard of beauty that society mimics, by advertising through various media outlets, such as movies and television.
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The remainder of society questions where they belong, and are confuse on their identity with mimicry of the upper class. Morrison uses point of view, setting, and symbolism in her novel, to demonstrate society’s mimicry of beauty. The self-esteem level become more excessive that it became nature to these character to self-criticize on their physical traits.
In fact, physical beauty affects the self-esteem of almost every character because several media outlets define it based on the culture of the time period. Morrison states, “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink- skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (26), which sheds light on the essence of beauty that the media creates. Claudia’s outlook on the racially biased ideal of beauty represents one where she tries to resist the pressure of worshipping her own ideal beauty.
Even though she tries it really changes nothing but brainwash her mind changing her mind set.
Hence the definition of beauty, in the eyes of an African American has established it as lack of attractiveness due to darker skin tone and dull dark eyes. Morrison states, 'Except for the father, Cholly, the rest of the family Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlove wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them” (25). For example, Pauline tries to replicate what she believes matches the idealized form of beauty that she sees through media outlets, yet she finds out that this beauty is unrealistic because of her different hair, skin, and features. African Americans in the novel come up with definitions of beauty from the white dominate culture and characters within the community that match those ideals are beautiful, like Maureen Peal. These communities isolate the rest of society who does not match up to these ideals and least resembles them, such as Pecola. The prologue ability to bring about this bad fate for the black women who allow the whites to present an imagine that is consider a social acceptance.
To begin with Pecola, she defines beauty as one who has blue eyes and only then can she surpass from her ugliness to live in a world where everything is easier, including the behavior her parents manifest. With this in mind, 'Pecola worships the beautiful, white icons of the 1940s: she drinks three quarts of milk at the MacTeer’s house so that she can use the cup with Shirley Temple’s picture on it, buys Mary Janes at the candy store so that she can admire the picture of the blond haired, blue eyed girl on the wrapper” (72).
Pecola believes the inheriting of having blue eyes has caused delusion that she experiences represents the damage of the ideals of white society can have on a young black girl who revolves her life around these ideas, since young minority women believe they have no choice other than to fit in. Mahaffey Paul Douglas in “The Adolescent Complexities of Race, Gender, and Class in Toni Morrison's “ The Bluest Eye.” without doubt suggested, “The examination uses specific moment from the text highlight race, gender, and class attitudes from various adults to demonstrate that the path to adulthood for the adolescent is treacherous for the young, black female.” Pecola seeks a nurturing relationship in an adult world of white, but only finds rejection and misery because of her racial, gender and class status. This rejection ultimately made Pecola alienated from society and, destroys her state of childhood innocence for her passionate desire for blue eyes forcing her into the harsh realities of the adult world while retaining the mental thoughts of a child.
It should be noted that Caucasians in the novel, are descriptively described as beautiful, as introduced a young girl in the novel named Maureen Peal. Maureen was the new girl at school who was around Pecola's age. She also has a lighter complexion and lighter colored eyes than the others did. These characteristics gave Maureen a lot of attention from other students as well as teachers who shown her a great amount of attention. Maureen gave the other girls the impression that she was down to earth until one day the girls got in an argument over Pecola's father. Maureen had called Pecola's father black. Marianne Modica in “Resistance among Friends: The Bluest Eye. 'Race among Friends: Exploring Race at a Suburban School”, anticipate that “While most student felt comfortable enough to include me in their jokes when they were in the mood and ignore me when they went” (104).
This quote extends to Morrison novel, The Bluest Eye, as Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola decided the best way is to stick with each other to avoid the students. Coming in school already with no kind of attraction was reason for isolation, for the students start a racism song towards Pecola singing, “Black e mo. Black e mo.”(65). Claudia had asked Maureen who she was calling black. Maureen then called Claudia black and taunted her by saying, “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute” (73)! Maureen's words had hurt the girl's feelings and they began to believe what she had said. Having no control of being black, Claudia and Frieda witness the racial discrimination while in site of a new student Maureen who was consider attractive for her lighter skin and style was easily able to converse amongst others.
The Breedlove family consider themselves as being ugly because of all they see around them as to what is considered real beauty. They feel like they cannot compare or have more confidence because of what they see. The family is full of low self-esteem. Pecola believes that by having blue eyes, they would take all her troubles and worries away. Timothy B Powell in “Toni Morrison: The Struggle to Depict the Black Figure on the White Page.” conjectured that, “It is symbology of light and dark, in which blackness becomes the archetype of absence, negation, even evil, which must be overthrown if the black self is ever to become understood as presence, affirmation, and good.” This in fact, relates to Pecola and Pauline's.
First, their disintegration is built from the standards imposed on them from Caucasian that they are not even allowed to be a part of. Their conviction in their own ugliness has strengthened them by what they are either told, see, and read, cannot be changed because others will not let them forget it, as they are 'thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people' (46-47). This quotation is very important because tells the reader that there is beauty that lays within Pecola, but it is an internal beauty which need one's believed to be accepted. Besides being taunted with an ideal that they are not allowed to accomplish, they themselves don't attempt to shape an attainable goal of perfection. Instead they believe others, and are reluctant in some sense unable to love themselves.
We see this when Claudia says that she felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals (190). Unfortunately, the baby did not survive which believed that the baby's death symbolized that things were not going to change for Pecola. In her own mind, Pecola did get her wish. She did not really obtain the blue eyes, physically, but she just believed that she had them. The shame that society hold against them is so shallow, that the girl had to go insane at such an early age and all because of her looks and the way that she was treated because of her looks.
Werlein Debra T in the article “Not so Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye.” corresponds that “Through Morrison’s reference to Shirley Temple, I examine images of children as both producers and consumer of commodities that are themselves ironically charged with the ideology of childhood innocence”. The Bluest Eye observes Pecola’s obsessive desire to have the bluest eyes is a symptom of the way that the black female body has become dominated by white masculine culture. Morrison asserts a typically powerful critique of the way that black subjectivity continues to be repressed in a commodity culture.
At the other end of the spectrum is the treatment that she receives from her father. He treats her as if she were a toy that he can use as he pleases without giving any remorse of her feelings. Cholly, Pecola’s father, has rape her without any real concern for her feelings. He does not care what happens to her or how she responds, he is simply looking to fulfil his own desires. Pecola thinks that her father does not care about her because she is not beautiful. She becomes convinced that beauty would make people respect her. Instead Claudia points out “we had dropped our seeds in our seeds in our little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds inn his own plot of black dirt”. (4-5)
Morrison includes this to dictate how society had allowed beauty standard and oppression to blind them. Pecola's trauma reflected to not only her physical beauty, but her internal beauty making a dominant influence on herself overall. Christian Barbara in ' Community and Nature: The Novels of Toni Morrison.” voiced “This violence is motivated by self-loathing and self-hatred that expresses itself and seeks liberation in the sacrifice of a young girl, Pecola Breedlove”. As Pecola is victimized not only by her mother and father, but by other members of the black community in Lorain who identify themselves not with their own community but with their oppressors. The conflict between the black and the white communities, results in victimization of the blacks by the dominant whites, as violence within the black communities have been presented throughout the novel. For the reason Pecola has torment herself for her physical appearance.
Pecola will never be pleased because no matter how hard she tries her eyes will never be adequately blue she will never be ideally enough to fit in with society. She can never take back a whole self because she cannot be as perfect as others would have her to be. Her mother cannot be responsibility because she is given the same life judgment being a black woman herself. There is no success in this story, only self-destruction. Both Pauline and Pecola are products of society's unachievable standards and are finally destroyed by their helplessness to move beyond these unattainable ideals. Pecola herself believe in others' judgment rather than hers. Her collapse is the faith being undefeated because of her illusion of the ideal beauty.
Coard Stephanie in “Perceptions of and Preferences for Skin Color, Black Racial Identity, and Self‐Esteem Among African Americans1” ,suggested “Issues such as skin color; conflicts over other physical features; and the presence of anger and hostility toward themselves, Whites, and other Blacks have been among a number of social artifacts and presumed social behavioral indicators of Black self-hatred.” (2257) The 'Eye' within the title refers to Pecola's miserable wanting of blue eyes, but it may also refer to the eye that takes Pecola as its target of destruction infused with beauty itself. In this sense, the novel's central shows the community's lack of self-love. Pecola doesn’t appreciate her community for they've set rules defining the physical beauty within an individual.
Pecola along with the rest of the characters has suffering in their lives as they face self-hatred being African American. The individual is the result of his\her society and in a way or another is influenced by the community's ideals regarding anything. That being so, Pecola is the victim of her community's criteria of ideal of beauty. Not having the demanded criteria of the ideal of beauty makes Pecola feels as if she were dead in alive surroundings. Proves that the notion of physical beauty dominate affects the self-esteem. She does not endure her life facing her failure to get love and respect for not accomplishing the ideal physical beauty features. Pecola and the rest of the characters, giving up, shows their weak personality and inability to face problem of being a black person in a world of white people. Getting shelter in madness result increasing insanity rise can be regarded as a psychological thought by which will only make to believe the achievement of having blue eyes and white skin is beautiful.
Beauty is Pain: What Society Sees versus What I See. (2021, Dec 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/beauty-is-pain-what-society-sees-versus-what-i-see-essay
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