FREE Whitewashing is Beautiful - The Bluest Eye Essay (original) (raw)

Beauty plays a highly influential role through Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Morrison's novel highlights the ideals of the south in the 1940's, displaying middle to upper-class ideals of beauty - which seem centered upon whiteness and proves to be harmful to young black girls living in this time. Not only is the novel focused on the effect of these unrealistic standards of beauty on young black girls, but it also shows how it affects others, such as the adult women in the novel as well. Each character craves the desire for a trait that is withheld only within the conventional white- American standards of beauty; whether it is blue eyes, lighter skin, or straighter hair. In magazines, movies, and on cups, only white beauty is celebrated as beautiful, leaving women of color out of the picture - or typically, in the background. Prioritizing white features as the standard for beauty proves itself as being a socially constructed ideal - something many people strive for, but cannot properly attain. In the novel, the readers are introduced to the many ways in which women of this time period have altered their cultural normalities of beauty to fit into society's definition of beautiful. This was done by whitewashing away the "funk" that women of color held in order to fit into society's mold of beautiful. .
Whitewashing is a term used in society that takes people from non-white cultures and molds them into a typical and normal white idealized American version of beauty. People in these cultures change their normal traits within their culture to fit into these norms. This could be black women straightening their hair, or getting a weave to fit into a certain, white culture, or people in India and China, using a bleach based lotion to make their skin less pigmented. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison refers to these traits of nature as "funk". This "funk" that is wiped away are little things that a black woman is born with to try and get rid of.

Essays Related to Whitewashing is Beautiful - The Bluest Eye

1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," was published in 1970. ... In 1965 she started writing 'The Bluest Eye." ... " The characters in the bluest eye show exactly why such a movement was needed. ... Pecola Breedlove is the central figure in "The Bluest Eye." ... "The Bluest Eye" focuses on Pecola Breedlove, a lonely adolescent black girl in the late 1940's. ...

2. The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye, written in 1940 by Toni Morrison, is constructed to reveal a very powerful point that applies not only to the book, but also to many societies of the present day. ... The ideas and views present in The Bluest Eye are related to beauty and what makes one beautiful. ... In the opening of The Bluest Eye, the passage from the Dick and Jane story, becomes a representation of an ideal white person's life. ... Eye imagery fills the scene, as the shopkeeper cannot "see" Pecola. ... She becomes the society that would accept her as beautiful with the bluest eyes. ...

3. Whiteness as a standard of beauty in the Bluest Eye

Whiteness as pure and ethereal symbol plays a very large role in The Bluest Eye. ... Toni Morrison's portrayal of whiteness as the standard of beauty is readily apparent throughout The Bluest Eye. ... Henry compares them to beautiful white celebrities of the time. ... She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria--they flocked to the table of her choice- (62-3) While the overall majority of The Bluest Eye is centered on white as a standard of beauty, Claudia constantly rejects feelings of inferiority due to her blackness. ... Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, ...

4. The Bluest Eye

Fighting, drinking, seducing Abusive, impulsive, vulnerable Charles (Cholly) Breedlove In the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison, the protagonist was Pecola Breedlove and the antagonist was her father, Cholly Breedlove. ... She had driven herself into a state of madness just for a pair of blue eyes; in her mind that's the only way she could be beautiful. ... The Bluest Eye. ...

5. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye By: Toni Morrison Blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin was the envy of most young African American girls in the 1940's. In the tragic novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl is a victim of racial self-loathing and also rape by her father which results in pregnancy. ... She longs to disappear from the face of the Earth to rid her of her problems; however, it soon drives her into a yearning to become beautiful. ... The emphasis on Europeans in Pecola's community gives her the idea that only white people are beautiful...

6. The Bluest Eye

Bluest Eye Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye is about the life of the Breedlove family who resides in Lorain, Ohio, in the late 1930s. ... She wants the bluest eye. ... Instead of conventional chapters and sections, The Bluest Eye is broken up into seasons, fall, winter, spring, and summer. ... The name of the novel, "The Bluest Eye," is meant to get the reader thinking about how much value is placed on blue-eyed little girls. ... There are two major metaphors in The Bluest Eye, one of marigolds and one of dandelions. ...

7. The bluest eye

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is the story of young black girl growing up in a small town in Ohio, during the 1940's. ... She's in an abusive marriage, but she reconciles this by believing that love and happiness is reserved for the beautiful people, the white people. ... This is her mother's influence coming through again, good things happen to the beautiful (love, wealth, happiness) and the opposite, therefore, must happen to the ugly. ... Not only is Maureen more beautiful, she is wealthy as well, a further proof, in Pecola's eyes, that the less black you are th...

8. The Bluest Eye Summary

In the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses abuse and hardship to show the tragic consequences that come from racism. ... The Bluest Eye shows ways in which white beauty standards hurt the lives of black girls and women. ... The characters in the Bluest Eye are faced both directly and indirectly by racism. ... Three characters from The Bluest Eye that I will be describing are Pecola , Claudia and Pauline. ... Toni Morrison shows us what racism produces in the Bluest Eye. ...

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