Many scholars and scientists truly believed that physical beauty and grace were indicative of other "internal" traits, and that the "less beautiful" races (i.e. all non-whites, though there were gradients established in this regard) were of poorer moral quality and intelligence, and had other undesirable internal characteristics as well (Gibson 1990). This means that the concepts of beauty that are expressed in the book have both direct and symbolic implications. This is evidenced in the fact that Pauline, Pecola's mother -- and one of the primary characters by which Pecola learns that "standards" of beauty -- is only truly happy when she is in the presence of rich white people that typify what she thinks of as "proper," "beautiful," and accomplished. Even though she herself was an Afircan-America, the indoctrination into mainstream society that she had lived through -- in a past that was arguably as disruptive and horrible as Pecola's own experiences -- made her believe that she was ugly because she was darker skinned, and because of all the other "detriments" to her character that were attendant on this darkness. This indicates how insidious and pervasive cultural attitudes of racism truly are; it was not merely that Pauline and Pecola and the other African-Americans in the Bluest Eye had to contend with a world that judged them harshly, unfairly, and preemptively, but that they had to deal with inner selves that engaged in the same judgment.

There are also more subtle and insidious ways in which the literature of the first half of the twentieth century -- that which Pecola and Pauline would have encountered in school, when they attended -- that concepts of beauty and institutional racism were created. The sheer absence of positive black role models or even the presence of African-American children in stories was a major part of the cultural forces that instilled a warped and denied sense of beauty to Pecola, just as it has led to a great deal of harm and struggle for real-world African-Americans, and African-American women, specifically (Rosenberg 1987). One cannot have a concept of something that simply doesn't exist, and this...

The very concept of a "beautiful" black female is antithetical to the institutionalized racism that existed in the era explored in the Bluest Eye (and that arguably still exists today), and thus Pauline would have been unable to truly forumlate the idea of a beauty that applied to her or to her daughter. That is, the idea being on-existent, there was no way to mold the idea or the individual to fit into the framework that society has created.
Conclusion

The sense of identity that many of the characters in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye develop or attempt to develop is very much tied to their external sense of identity and attractiveness. Beauty, in this schema, is intimately associated with a sense of worth, and thus the same racism that tells African-American females they are not beautiful also tells them they are lacking in individual and personal worth. Pecola receives her sense of being "unbeautiful" not only from society at large, however, but also from her mother -- the institutional nature of the racism has fully indoctrinated Pauline, and this perpetuates the racism and the sense of worthlessness attendant upon it. Beauty is at once personal and a cultural label, and Pecola does not feel beautiful in either sense.

References

Gibson, D. (1990). Text and Countertext in the Bluest Eye. In Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye, Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House.

Klotman, P. (1979). Dick-and-Jane and the Shirley Temple Sensibility in the Bluest Eye. Black American Literature Forum 13(4): 123-5.

Morrison, T. (1970). The Bluest Eye. New York: Knopf.

Rosenberg, R. (1987). Seeds in Hard Ground: Black Girlhood in the Bluest Eye. Black American Literature Forum 21(4): 435-45.