The Issue of Accepting One's Inner Beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Pecola was an eleven year old black girl who feels as if being white is the true meaning of beauty to society and to herself. The Title of this novel is ‘The Bluest Eye’ written by Toni Morrison in the African American Literature. The novel's focus, however, was on a young girl named Pecola Breedlove. And Pecola, as we are told in Chapter 11, will be raped by her father around the novel's end.

The beginning states the story so that the reader can know about Pecola's story ending tragic. The Breedloves were unhappy, and poor. Their story had seemed in many ways to be settled, as they were often the victims of events of which they have no control over. Their situation was a huge contrast to the MacTeers, who were of the slender means but had a really strong family force, The MacTeers were never really passive victims as in the way that the Breedloves were in this novel.

The use of descriptive imagery in this story is used in a way such as Pecola describing on how both the media and the public were looking up to women with “Blue eyes, Yellow hair and White skin” for being the most beautiful and that being the only way that beauty was to be seen as. Other than Women of color being used to promote beauty in the media like a white woman/girl could have been at the time, Shirley Temple was an example of the way that beauty was being represented through her time and it made Pecola feel as if she was not seen as beautiful.

Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye was not at all any different from other little girls. She wanted to be beautiful, And though America had already set the standards for being beautiful a woman that must have " blue eyes, blonde hair, and white skin" lead Pecola to nothing but insanity because just when society couldn’t accept an ugly little black girl neither could both she and those around her do so. Pecola wasn’t like the other children, she did not involve herself in any of the teasing, She was so used to all of the criticism she got because she is not only black but “ugly” too. And on Second thought, there was also Maureen Peal. Who also is not white but light- skinned which lead to her being accepted by everyone like the black boys wouldn’t trip her, the white girls didn’t suck their teeth at her as they did to Pecola, the white boys would stone her,and the black girls would step aside for her whenever she wanted to use the sink.

None of the treatment that Maureen had gotten from people was ever given to Pecola and this is part of what Pecola was explaining because of Maureen have lighter skin, she was seen as beautiful, she was given what Pecola wished she could have ever had and happiness...Happiness, Is what she wanted that so is the reason why She believed that being white could have given her, the Privilege of her having the slightest of Possibility to not having to go through what she has. She seen them smiling and she wanted that, Pecola wanted the beauty and the happiness. The Physical appearance of one lead to an alter in another’s psychological condition. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes...were different,that it is to say,beautiful,she herself would be different.” Voiced by Claudia MacTeer and she was showing how Pecola felt strongly towards the fact that she was physically seen was “ugly” and she didn’t accept her for any of it whether she or others criticized her over how she was and This connects really strongly towards my thesis on how Pecola felt as if she were only seen as an “ugly” little black girl to the society around her who believed being white was the only beauty.

American culture had promoted the idea of whiteness that should be desired, and Pecola is along with society that being white was having beauty, she quoted that “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every child treasured.” This supports the claim being Beautiful, Happy and Accepted in society was about being white. To be happy was to know happy, Pecola did not know how to be happy, she didn’t know to accept that to be black is to be “ugly” in the society, and as Maureen pointed out to Pecola for being like a character who “hates her mother because she is black and ugly” and Maureen had been different because she has accepted the American Standards and Pecola didn’t not know how to accept it because all she has ever known about beauty was for being white and having blue eyes was always the right thing in American culture.

A person cannot be happy without knowing happiness, Pecola could have never been happy because she has never known happiness, From the beginning when her own mother wouldn’t see her as anything but “ugly” the person who is supposed to love her regardless the appearance she had, Pecola wanted to be happy, she wanted to be like the blue eyed white girls, the society that made blue eyed white girls the meaning of beauty was not able to become something that Pecola could have done, and without Accepting Ones Inner Beauty was to face the American Standards in her Society.