Bluest Eye
...luest Eye provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere. For the Breedloves what society defined as beauty was not something they felt they could ever be. They are undeniably Black in their appearance. The world they live in cannot tolerate them, cannot tolerate their Blackness. They are a constant reminder to their community and the nation of the terrible events that have transpired between Caucasians, and African Americans. They and the other members of their community have internalized assumptions of their immutable inferiority. Their thick lips, nappy hair, dark skin, and broad noses are ugly because Black is and forever will be ugly and of lesser value. They were condemned by society for being ugly and they themselves succumb to that labeling. They never tried to rise above it and thus raised their children in the same manner. You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question. The master said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw in fact, support for it leaning at them, from every billboard, every movie, every glance. 'Yes,' they had said. 'You are right,’ (pp. 38-39). This created a feeling of self-hatred and worthlessness in their children, especially their young daughter Pecola. Pecola Breedlove was a young Black girl, who embodied the pain and internal struggle Black people have weathered in America. From birth, Pecola was said to be ugly by her mother; her mother set the tone of her life when she made this statement at her birth and the poor child was never given a chance to ever establish herself: “But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly.” (p.128) She was never loved but rather she was neglected and made to have self-contempt because she didn’t look like someone that her parents and society would love. If the socially accepted image of beauty is the direct opposite of your natural appearance, there are bound to be negative psychological effects. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. Pecola disliked herself so much that she started fantasizing, dreaming and praying that she was a pretty blue eyed girl whom her parents would love: “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different….If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they’d say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes” (p. 47). Throughout this novel, internalized racism is apparent both bluntly, and through the use of Toni Morrison's brilliant imagery and prose. Through Pauline, (Pecola's mother who clearly had issues of racial self-loathing) Morrison subtly depicts this internalized racism. Pauline Breedlove (Pecola’s mother) did not like herself; in turn, she projected that onto her kids. Because she did not like herself, she also found fault with everything that reminded her of her ugliness, which only escalated every problem she had: “And then she lost her front tooth. But there must have been a speck, a brown speck easily mistaken for food but which did not leave, which sat on the enamel for months, and grew, until it cut into the surface and then to the brown putty underneath, finally eating away to the root, but avoiding the nerves, so its presence was not noticeable or uncomfortable. Then the weakened roots, having grown accustomed to the poison, responded one day to severe pressure, and the tooth fell free, leaving a ragged stump behind. But even before the little brown speck, there must have been the conditions, the setting that would allow it to happen in the first place,” (Morrison 21). The imagery of the brown speck in this quote can represent many things, like the racial self-loathing that grows within one-self, eventually becoming an infectious insecurity that devastates the individual who harbors it. Furthermore, the black women who move from ot...