How Does The Bluest Eye Relate To The First Cultural Image Of Beauty

Sabrina Peters
Midterm Paper
Professor Hurt
March 12, 2015 The Bluest Eye For decade’s society has always had a certain set of beauty standards that (young) girls and even women were expected to meet. Those girls and women who did not meet these certain idealistic standards, they were often made fun of, pushed aside, treated poorly, and at times they were not considered or seen as beautiful; these standards that society has set regarding what is considered beautiful can be destructive, especially for young girls growing up during this time period. The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison about a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who prays everyday for beauty. Pecola is often
mocked, bullied, and treated poorly because she has a darker skin color, curly hair, and brown eyes and that sets her apart.
Pecola is desperate to be finally be noticed in a good way and to be seen and considered as beautiful for once and she believes that if she at least had blue eyes they would finally make people in her community look at her differently and be able to change what she sees and how she perceives it, because she lives in a world where you are only considered “beautiful” if you have blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses cultural images to demonstrate how destructive these beauty standards can be to young girls. In the beginning of the novel, Toni Morrison introduces the readers to the first cultural image of Shirley Temple. When Toni Morrison first introduces the cultural image of Shirley Temple, it allows the readers to get a sense of Claudia’s attitude and
how she feels about/towards Shirley Temple. Shirley Temple first comes up when Claudia’s younger sister Frieda was talking in complete admiration for how “cu-ute” Shirley Temple was (Morrison, pg. 19), and Claudia responds by stating how she was “physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworm hair” (Morrison, pg. 20). Shirley Temple is an important cultural image because she was a white girl who had blonde hair and blue eyes, which is what was considered and deemed “beautiful” by society. An additional reason as to why Shirley Temple is significant to the novel is because it helps illustrate the resistance that Claudia feels towards the dolls and the transference of feelings towards the real life white girls; in fact, her resistance can be seen when she dismembers the doll and states “I had a stranger more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world” (Morrison, pg. 19). Claudia’s feelings about the white dolls is a prime example as to how destructive beauty standards can be, especially because of the fact that Claudia feels the same impulses and hatred towards the real white girls as she did the white doll (s). As stated earlier, the dismembering and resentment Claudia feels is an example of the destruction beauty standards can have; however, it also shows one of the effects that beauty standards has on an individual. In contrast to Claudia’s sense of resentment and the dismembering of the Shirley Temple doll, the cultural image of Mary Jane allows the readers to see the effect of beauty standards on another young girl, Pecola Breedlove.
This particular cultural image of Mary Jane is also an important cultural image in the novel. Pecola Breedlove, from the day she was born, has always been considered and looked at as ugly. Her own mother even calls her daughter “ugly” and prefers the daughter of her employer, who is white, over her own daughter. Pecola’s mother also is significant because she also has been deemed “not beautiful” by society and the media and the readers can see this by the passage “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” (Morrison, pg. 122). Pecola Buys a couple of the candy bars with the image of Mary Jane on the wrapper, because she absolutely admires Mary Jane with her “blonde hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort” and it also shows Pecola’s desire to meet society’s requirements for beauty when she states “Be Mary Jane” (Morrison, pg. 50). By using Mary Jane as a cultural image, Morrison allows the reader to see the effects beauty standards have on Pecola and how she perceives it. Additionally, it shows how considerably more vulnerable Pecola is because she is
literally buying into what society has deemed as beautiful. The image of Mary Jane also allows the readers to directly compare the effects beauty standards it has on Pecola and those on Claudia; it also allows the readers to foreshadow that Pecola will be the character in the novel that will be most effected by the beauty standards. Another significant cultural image that the readers are introduced to is the image of blue eyes. The cultural image of blue eyes is the most significant image in the entire novel because it is the root to majority of the problems in the book. During th

Work Cited
Cormier-Hamilton, Patrice. “Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: The Journey Away from Self-Love in the Bluest Eye.” MELUS19.4 (1994): 109. ProQuest. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. London: Pan books, 1990. Print.