How and why, is “Beauty” Accepted?
... cannot. She hates Shirley because of what she stands for, the white standard ideals of beauty. She also has every right to hate Shirley Temple because of what the white standard ideals of beauty are and the fact that she does hate her makes her stronger than those who just accept it. Another way the white standard ideals of beauty are shown to children and harm the community other than Shirley Temple is through dolls for little girls. These dolls are supposed to be wanted by every girl. “It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll” (19-20). The dolls are all white, blue eyed, supposed beautiful girls. While Claudia does not know what to do with the dolls, what confuses her more is why they are considered beautiful. The dolls should not look all like because it sends the wrong message to the children of the community, saying that only people who looked like the doll were beautiful, which is an awful message to send to children. It is the frustration of not understanding the reason that the dolls are so beautiful, that Claudia acts the way she does with them. “I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me” (20). Claudia struggles with the “why” the dolls are considered to be so beautiful, but slowly she realizes that it is just the fact that they are white with blue eyes. This frustrates her and makes her reject these ideals more than ever. While Claudia’s actions may seem extreme, she is justified in doing so because it is her way to reject the white standard ideals of beauty and that is a great thing to do because the more people who reject them, the better off the community will be. Another example of the acceptance of the white standard ideals of beauty is through the adults transmitting their acceptance onto their children. “Here, they said, this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it” (21.) The adults are clearly sending the message to their children that the dolls are what is beautiful and that they should be lucky to even own one. The fact that the adults do this is bad and it makes the adults bad as well because it only promotes the white standard ideals of beauty more which in turn, continue to destroy the community. Claudia’s hatred towards the dolls becomes aggressive and she destroys her dolls. She transfers this hatred onto white girls, and she even wants to dismember them like the dolls. “But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so” (22). Claudia is showing the reader that it is not in fact the dolls that she hates. She is showing her hatred for the fact that they resemble little white girls who are considered beautiful by society. Claudia’s actions and feelings may not be right, but they are certainly justifiable and good because she doesn’t ever actually take her aggression out on white girls, only dolls. Right after Claudia talks about transferring her hatred to white girls, she displays curiosity as to why they are considered beautiful. “What made people look at them and say, “Awwwww” but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them” (22-23). Claudia is questioning why white girls are treated so differently and what is so different about them that makes her unable to be treated the same, just as she questions why the dolls are beautiful. Her curiosity is natural and it also is showing how terrible other people are in the community for accepting and acting on the white standard ideals of beauty. The Breedlove’s are used as a definite example of how black people are considered ugly and what ugliness will do to a family. “The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly” (38). The fact that they live in the worst place in the neighborhood is because of race and the “ugliness” that society says they have which is appalling and should never happen within any society. This makes their whole life harder on the entire family which then makes life hard on the community. The Breedlove’s ugliness is all the same, except for Cholly, and the ugliness is so prevalent with the Breedloves because of their acceptance to it. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly. Except for the father, Cholly whose ugliness was behavior, 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. (38) The novel continues on to physically describe the Breedloves and all of the characteristics that define them which is obviously not under their control and yet still related to them because of their race. They realize this and accept it. The Breedlove’s are weak for accepting this and acting the way they do and are just as at fault as the people who push the ideals on to them. Another reason the Breedlove’s are considered to be so ugly by the community and the white standard ideals of beauty is because of the way they accept it and deal with it. “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” “And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. Dealing with it each according to his way” (39). The Breedlove’s are so accepting to the white standard ideals of beauty, that they have to each find a way to even live through it whether its using it as a way to hide, become a martyr, o...