The Bluest Eyes

The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison tell the story of Pecola Breedlove an innocent little girl looking for someone who love her, the relationship with her parents is terrible, her father rapes her, her mother and the rest of the community reject her, and she finish talking to an imaginary friend who is in fact the facet of her split personality.
The Bluest Eye shows how racism infiltrates and destroys the psychological health of African Americans. In this story, Through Pecola, Morrison exposes the power and cruelty of white, middle-class American definitions of beauty, for Pecola will be driven mad by her consuming obsession for white skin and blonde hair and bluest eyes. A victim of popular white culture and its pervasive advertising, also from the day she is born, Pecola is told that she is ugly, Pecola learns from her mother that she is ugly, and she thereby learns to hate herself; because of her blackness, she is continually bombarded by rejection and humiliation from others around her who value appearance. Pecola believes that people would value her more if she weren’t black. If she were white, blonde, and very blue-eyed, she would be loved.

“The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll…All the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasure.” (Morrison 19, 20) The appearance of these toys significant in the life of Pecola determine their growing desire to have blue eyes, like the dolls that give black girls every Christmas, as absurd as the claim of adults suggest their young daughters the role of mothers with white baby dolls. Those who refused to that game as one of the friends of Pocola destroyed the toy that they found alien to them, others, however, found in toys her greatest desire, and dream. This shows that the dolls represent it as a product of racial distinction, no black dolls for black girls, and a contrasting element, interpreted in terms of the condition of blacks as a denial of its existence by those who produced these items. Was that a way to exercise a kind of power to the other, to remove it, it was impossible to include in a society whose references were limited one world, the white world.

In the winter section Morrison introduces Maureen Peal, a light-skinned black girl who seems to personify enviable white qualities. Maureen is lauded by teachers; Pecola is ignored. Like Jane in the primer, Maureen, the “high-yellow dream child with sloe green eyes,” (pg 62) is considered pretty and perfect; in contrast, Pecola is black, and ugly. Most of Maureen’s black schoolmates are blindly enslaved by Maureen’s whiteness; because of how Maureen’s brown hair is styled: It looks like “two lynch ropes hanging down her back.”(pg 62) In other words, to worship blindly that which is white is to put your head in a noose. These black children have been so thoroughly taught to revere whatever is white, that they are blindly in awe of a black girl who is not even white. She is only “high yellow.” Maureen’s eyes are not blue; they are very dark and slanted, and moreover she has a dog tooth Maureen is not really pretty because she has yellowish skin, dark and slanted green eyes, however, being much lighter than all the other black children, she is prized and envied by most of them.

For Pecola’s mother movies will somehow provides an escape of reality “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another-physical beauty” (pg 122) Mrs. Breedlove learns to despise herself while going to the cinema to watch romantic movies of Jean Harlow, a blonde actress of the 40s. This contempt for their race makes even come to despise her own daughter. So, Morrison shows how the African American community has fully absorbed the cultural model of the white majority, and have accepted the standard of beauty imposed by the white man and what is even worse have accepted and internalized the racist terrible idea that white man has to black men. In this sense, the concept of feminine beauty that appears as the ideal of beauty is to the stars of Hollywood: Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and even Shirley Temple. It is a concept of beauty that is printed in the unconscious force and denigrating the beauty of the African-American minority.

All cultures teach their own standards of beauty and desirability through billboards, movies, books, dolls, and other products. The white standard of beauty is pervasive throughout this novel because there is no black standard of beauty.
His concept of beauty is the beauty imposed by the white minority and is not able to perceive their own beauty. Indeed, much of the damage that would infringe on Pecola comes from members of their own race who have internalized the concept of beauty of the white majority to hurt their self-esteem. Internalize the fact that they are unimportant human beings, especially lower and ugly. The world that Pecola habits adores blonde haired blue eyed people. 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 the idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people’s lives in many different ways.
Media has had an influence on beauty standards throughout the world, therefore, it affect women of all races, and lead that women try to alter their appearance, resulting in low self-esteem. Television and ads are methods of spreading the ideas of you are too big, your hair is not straight enough or you are not skinny enough so those methods force people to think that you have to have the perfect figure, to be accepted and respected in society. Now, more than ever, to belong and be accepted into a social group is central to the life of most people, especially teenagers. This acceptance is reflected in the adoption of a stereotype of beauty driven by the media. People simply accept fashion and are part of it, they are driven by the influences of the media because they need to feel part of a group, be like everyone else. They need to feel comfortable, have no reasons for discrimination.
Celebrities push the general public to get surgeries, lose weight and other trends so that they can achieve that picture of perfection planted into heads. The media has long built a misconception of beauty, which in the end emotionally rips apart victims like Pecola that do not fall into that image.
Beauty is something we all want, but when it is not visible to the eye it can have damaging effects. Beauty is a destructive force that brings pain to those who do not hold it.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. “The Bluest Eye.” 1st Edition. New York: Random House Digital, INC., 2007. 224.
Print

Cited: Morrison, Toni. “The Bluest Eye.” 1st Edition. New York: Random House Digital, INC., 2007. 224. Print