Racist Beauty Ideals Standards and Internalized Racial Self-Hatred in Toni Morrison\'s the Bluest Eye

Racist Beauty Ideals and Racial Self-Hatred

This paper examines Toni Morrison's novel the Bluest Eye from the perspective of three different interest groups:

Those who would interrogate the paper on the basis of issues related to gender, or of the feminist movement;

Those whose interests lie in the book's treatment of children's issues or advocacy, and Those engaging in a dialogue centering around issues of race.

It should also be understood that these topics are not necessarily separate, distinct and non-overlapping. In much of the analysis there will be areas of intersection of discussion of topics in question.

Much has already been written about Morrison's novel and its exploration of black family life in 1940s Midwest America. Morrison examines what it means to grow up young, black, and female in America and it is appropriate that this work considered from those perspectives.

The Bluest Eye is primarily the story of Pecola Breedlove and Claudia MacTeer, two children whose lives come together when Claudia's mother extends an act of charity to Pecola. Claudia narrates and through her eyes we learn what their lives were like. One of the pervasive themes that The Bluest Eye explores is racial self-hatred as Morrison examines the plight of black folk in that era. She focuses on their victimization by systemic racism and the resultant alienation that characterizes their existence. Being Black and being American demanded the ability to reconcile the challenges that racism posed, all the while enduring a basic struggle for survival.

As Holt comments in his analysis, he similarly explores the topic of alienation by Blacks to comment on its political uses. In his analysis of two essays written by W.E.B. Du Bois, Holt notes that "both passages have as their theme the fundamental duality of black life in America, the paradox of being so intimately a part of the national culture and yet so starkly apart from it" (Holt, 302).

Morrison's characters live with this paradox and this duality throughout the novel. Pauline's family relationships are fractured, she chooses to spend as much time as she can away from her family so she be the "valued" servant of the Fisher family. Pecola's alienation is so complete that her personality disintegrates following her rape, pregnancy and death of her baby.

The Bluest Eye takes its title from Pecola's desperate wish for blue eyes. Pecola has few friends or possessions, the grimness of her world is marked by poverty of spirit that she ultimately cannot survive. As the story unfolds, Morrison's introduces Pecola's world, one where an eleven-year-old black girl fixates on a bizarre fantasy that negates her blackness. Pecola grows more and more invested in this obsession because it is the only survival strategy she sees available to her. Pecola believes blue eyes will make her attractive, and fulfilled.

Morrison examines Pecola's life from a perspective that shifts between race and gender. Pecola suffers through her unhappy home life and childhood which confirm her poor opinion of herself on a daily basis. Pauline Breedlove has withdrawn from Pecola and instead bestows her love on a white child whose family employs Pauline, while Pecola's father is drunken and remote. Pecola believes she is ugly and unlovable, and the world relentlessly reinforces her belief.

The basis for Pecola's belief in her ugliness is grounded in a racial self-hatred that she is ill-equipped to deal with. Pecola first appears in the novel when she comes to live with the MacTeer family, which move is necessitated by her drunken father having set fire to the family home. Here is the first inkling we get that all is not well in Pecola's world. There is no support system, no extended family to take in Pecola. And during her stay with the MacTeers, Mrs. MacTeer is deeply offended that no one from Pecola's dysfunctional family stops by to check on her well-being.

Pecola struggles to overcome acomplex combination of racial self-loathing, rampant consumerism and fragility that pressure Pecola's fragile world. Pecola believes that having blue eyes will bring love and acceptance into her fragmented and barren existence. For Pecola, "Blue eyes epitomize everything desirable in white American culture & #8230; Pecola's longing for this cosmetic change expresses her deeper need to reform the world by reforming the way she sees it" (Fick, 11). Pecola needs to reshape the terms in which she engages with her family, friends and community; she sees blue eyes as a means to achieving this transformation. Following the rape by her drunken father, and the loss of her baby, Pecola's disintegration is complete. She retreats into herself to inhabit a fantasy world where she does indeed have blue eyes.

Compare Pecola's amazing solution, transformation from brown to blue eyes, with her friend Claudia's reaction to the barrage of white beauty standards. Claudia is determined to understand her family's admiration for the "big, blue-eyed Baby Doll" she receives because "all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl treasured." (20) Claudia takes no pleasure in the present, but instead dismembers the doll to inspect its inner workings. Claudia's seeing is so different from Pecola's, her vision is an angry introspection that drives Claudia to confront what she questions and instinctively reject a gift from which she had every reason to be alienated. Morrison, in both cases, uses the sense of sight to characterize each girl's perspective; their approaches could not have been more different.

There is no question that Morrison's handling of black girls playing with white dolls is intended to show the psychological damage done to the developing black child's self-esteem. Pecola, in her vulnerability, internalized society's racist messages, doing violence to her self-esteem in the process. The 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education reaffirmed this position, citing a report by psychologist Kenneth Clark on African-American children's racial identification. In more recent years there has been some debate as to whether Clark's recommendation may have been based on bad science. In her study of the ramifications of Brown v. Board, Bergner notes that with the rise of black power and black pride in the '60s and '70s, the psychic damage paradigm fell out of favor. "The doll test discourse not only reflects shifting racial politics but also configures notions of racial identity" (300-301). No matter which side of the debate one favors, it is clear from Morrison's treatment that she portrays the racial preference for white dolls as further evidence of trauma caused by systemic racial discrimination.

Chin also examines the topic of ethnically correct dolls in her analysis of the ethnically correct toy industry. She describes how the toy industry had touted ethnically correct dolls as a progressive solution to representation and inclusion in the toy box, as well as in children's lives. The children involved in Chin's study had very few ethnically correct dolls. Instead the girls had white dolls that they brought into their worlds through styling their hair in ways racially marked as black. Chin contrasts a case study of Mattel's Shani dolls with an ethnographic look at race and commodities among New haven kids, Chin's paper locates children's consumption within the context of social inequality; a context examined in few studies or consumption. Chin concludes that taking kids as primary ethnographic subjects suggests ways in which this largely silenced group can speak to larger social and theoretical issues, among them race, class, gender, and age (Chin, 305-321).

Morrison's novel is concerned with various manifestations of racism in America, one form of which is economic slavery. The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio in 1940-41 during a period when Blacks moved in large numbers from the pre-industrial South to a consumer-based America in the North, where many eked out a marginal existence much like that of the Breedloves. In the words of Fick "the crude white masters of the South are replaced by invisible systems of mastery dedicated to maximizing profit through a process equally dehumanizing" (19). Morrison's depiction of their lives exposes a grim existence for many who believed they were transitioning to a better life.

Another aspect of racism that Morrison explores is the portrayal of ideal family life that the Dick and Jane primers provide. Debra Werrlein argues that schools teach more than math, science, and literacy (56). She posits that schools also serve to reproduce existing class structures, as well as reinforce dominant ideologies and bolster the political power of the state in capitalism. Werrlein makes the point that the Dick and Jane primers serve to posit the literary "masterplot" in The Bluest Eye, but that as textbooks in America's public schools, Morrison suggests that they posit a national masterplot as well, one that defines Americanness within the parameters of innocent white middle-class childhood. Once again, Morrison shows us that Black Americans cannot participate in this iconic existence.

Morrison's version of a 1940s childhood offers a starkly different reality than the sanitized version served up in the world of Dick and Jane. Through the use of an innovative literary form that imitates the primers, Morrison calls attention to the historical gloss that the primers apply to American family life. Werrlein holds that the Dick and Jane stories equate white privilege with a version of Americanness that occurs outside of history, arguing further that the poverty and suffering of the Breedlove family symbolizes America's brutal history of racial persecution. Through her portrayal of Pauline and Cholly, Morrison suggests that parents who emerge from histories of oppression might reproduce that degradation within the family unit. Instead of Cholly protecting and providing for his family, he burns down their home and later assaults his daughter. Instead of nurturing her offspring, Pauline rejects them, seeing in them a reflection of her own ugliness. She much prefers to spend all her time working as a domestic for the Fishers. Pecola's pregnancy and psychosis represent extreme consequences of racism. Werrlein asserts that, as various characters in The Bluest Eye "label, degrade and define Pecola's body so as to disavow the realities of racism in their own lives, Morrison suggests that they mirror the work of a nation that ironically invests in the ideology of childhood innocence at the expense of its children" (Werrlein, 53- 72).

In discussing Pecola's self-loathing and its role in her psychological destruction, one must address standards of beauty. Pecola was convinced of her ugliness, which knowledge was continually reinforced. One of the societal pressures she struggled against was the stereotypical definition of beauty that she could never hope to attain. If there was ever any doubt as to the influence of eth beauty industry Geoffrey Jones dismisses them in his examination of the globalization of the beauty industry. Jones argues that there is compelling research from a range of social sciences to posit the existence of a "beauty premium." He discusses the drivers behind the globalization of beauty and the strategies that firms employed to overcome challenges to globalization. Jones also reviews the outcomes, including the extent to which globalization resulted in homogenization, i.e. Americanization. Jones concludes from his research that globalization did not produce homogeneity; rather the beauty industry after 1980 was increasingly segmented by ethnicity, gender, age, income, and other characteristics. Jones found that nevertheless, certain ideals, especially for women had become widely diffused worldwide, including a lack of body odor, white natural teeth, slim figures, paler skins and rounder eyes. Corporate strategies helped bring about a reduction in the range of global variation in beauty ideals at the same time that they developed products which enabled more and more consumers to aspire to capturing the beauty premium (Jones, 125-154).

Throughout The Bluest Eye Morrison presents a black community that has accepted the white criteria of beauty for their own. Toys, candy, movies and beauty products, all of these informed their standards of beauty to align with a white consumer culture. When Mr. Henry, the MacTeer's boarder is initially introduced to Claudia and Frieda, he seeks to flatter them by comparing them to movie stars Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers. There is also Pauline who prepares to take in a movie by styling her hair to resemble Jean Harlow's. And Pecola who drank milk just to enjoy Shirley Temple's image on her cup. Popular American culture provided a white-defined standard of female beauty for them to internalize that was both racist and frivolous.

Claudia is the only one of the three girls who is able to reject the fraudulent images, which she does by destroying white baby dolls. Because the MacTeers possess the inner strength to withstand the poverty and discrimination of a racist society; they provide an environment in which their children can grow. Pecola, on the other hand, does not have joy and love to balance the pain and ugliness of her everyday experiences. Pecola's family is without the resources she needs, and without which she retreats into madness (Klotman, 123-125).

In her study Freeman (49-65) explores how social identity is formed in the U.S. She posits that in order for Black children to assimilate into the dominant culture, historically, their cultural values have been minimized. "This process of cultural assimilation or alienation has had a devastating effect on Black children's opportunities around the globe, particularly as it relates to the loss of their identity and to the underutilization of their human potential & #8230; A group's loss of identity occurs through a process of cultural alienation and annihilation and through a culture of exclusion" (Freeman, 51). Freeman maintains that education has been used as one of the primary channels through which cultural alienation and annihilation have occurred. According to Freeman, Pecola symbolizes all the Black children who have come to believe that if only they could be different, they would be valued.

Throughout The Bluest Eye Morrison explores the impact of popular and consumer cultures on youth identities and cultures. Studies show that parallels exist between Asian-Americans and African-Americans as they negotiate the process of Americanization. In their research Lee and Vaught analyze studies of first and second generation youth of color to explore their vulnerability to racialized images of gender and sexuality. These images are reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. Lee and Vaught maintain that gender, race and class inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization. Their research clearly showed that the Asian-American women in both studies were schooled by popular culture to objectify themselves, their bodies and their cultures. They report that the young women experienced a pernicious internalization of dominant ideas of Americanization (Lee and Vaught, 457-466). These studies, while they involved Asian-American girls and women shed light on the impact, can be easily seen to similarly apply to African-American teens and women. Morrison's portrayal of women and girls as they struggled with racist standards of beauty demonstrate the accuracy of this observation.

There continue to be other studies to examine, as suggested by The Bluest Eye in its investigation of racism and beauty standards. Rockquemore posits that skin color stratification within the Black community, combined with a low rate of marriageable men and high rates of interracial marriages among the most educated and affluent black men has created a social context that differentiates the interactional experience of biracial men and women. As a result, the interpersonal tension between Black and biracial women runs high. Rockquemore's findings illustrate how skin color acts as a microlevel manifestation of oppression for women of African descent (485- 503). The implications of this study serve to validate Morrison's treatment of racial identity construction in The Bluest Eye.

Another topic that Morrison explores is the effects of skin color in the context of racism. Hunter explores the effects of skin color on life outcomes for African-American and Mexican-American women. Hunter explains, using a historical framework of European colonialism and slavery, how skin color hierarchies were established and are maintained. Hunter uses the concept of social capital to explain how beauty, defined through light skin, works as capital and as a stratifying agent for women on the dimensions of education, income, and spousal status. According to Hunter, analysis shows that light skin predicts higher educational attainment for both groups of women. Light skin directly predicts higher personal earnings for African-American women, as well as higher spousal status for African-American women. The study shows that with respect to education, personal income, and spousal status, skin color modifies outcomes and produces advantages for the light skinned. Hunter suggests an explanation, that, it happens in part because racial ideologies devalue the phenotypes of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans and associates their features with ignorance and ugliness. Hunter concludes that European colonization and slavery have left a lasting imprint on African-American and Mexican-American women: skin color hierarchies that continue to privilege light skin over dark skin (Hunter, 175-193). Morrison explores the effects of skin color stratification in her treatment of the antipathy between Claudia and Frieda and Maureen Peal.

Kuenz addresses the disallowance of the specific cultures and histories of African-Americans and black women figured in The Bluest Eye, arguing that it is primarily as a consequence of or sideline to the more general annihilation of popular forms and images by an ever more all-pervasive and insidious mass culture industry. According to Kuenz, this industry increasingly disallows the representation of any image not premised on consumption or the production of normative values conducive to it. These values tend to be rigidly tied to gender and are race-specific to the extent that racial and ethnic differences are not allowed to be represented. Kuenz further asserts that for anyone not represented therein, and especially for African-Americans, interaction with mass culture frequently requires abdication of self or the ability to see oneself in eth body of another (Kuenz, 421-431).

Kuenz notes that the novel's most obvious and pervasive instance of this is in the seemingly endless reproduction of images of feminine beauty in everyday objects and consumer goods: white baby dolls, Shirley Temple cups, Mary Jane candies, even the clothes of "dream child" Maureen Peal. Kuenz comments that "The horror of the industry responsible for generating and continuing static and unattainable images is not just that, in the process of appropriating standards of beauty and femininity for white women -- though such is certainly horrible -- but that in so doing it also co-opts and transforms a history of communal and familial relationships it cannot otherwise accommodate" (Kuenz, 421-431).

Another topic that Morrison's novel suggests is that of body image disturbance. There is an emerging body of research comparing body image disturbance and eating problems among African-American and white women which suggests that there are major ethnic differences in these areas. According to Lovejoy, African-American women appear to be more satisfied with their weight and appearance than are white women, and they are less likely to engage in unhealthy weight control practices; yet they are more likely to have high rates of obesity (239-261).

Continuing to examine the topic of beauty standards, Lovejoy argues that there is some evidence to suggest that there is a more flexible and more egalitarian aesthetic of beauty in some Black communities, an aesthetic that may enable Black girls and women to develop greater self-acceptance. Lovejoy describes an Afrocentric aesthetic that is potentially liberating for Black women, and others, because it frees them from having to conform to a single, rigid, externally derived measure of beauty. This greater acceptance of different body shapes and sizes in Black communities, Lovejoy argues, may help to account not only for Black women's less critical attitude toward their weight and appearance, but for their greater propensity toward obesity (239-261).

Lovejoy cites Niobe Way (1995, 124), a psychologist who has studied Black adolescent girls, who suggests that Black parents may, "socialize their daughters to be outspoken and strong because they realize that if their daughters are passive and quiet, they may simply disappear in a society in which they and their daughters are already pushed to the margins" (Lovejoy, 254).

Morrison's novel invokes a discourse on beauty, racism and gender politics. In her essay Cheng ponders the question "…between a feminist critique of feminine beauty and racial denial of nonwhite beauty, where does this leave the woman of color?" (192). Cheng notes that it is unclear whether assenting to the prospect of a "beautiful woman of color" would be disruptive of racist discourse or complicit with gender stereotypes. According to Cheng, the question of beauty for a woman of color is thus fraught with competing demands. She argues that "value" is itself divided among cultural, political, and personal interests. Because of the history of racialist inflections in aesthetic discourse and the Manichean differentiation between white and nonwhite women, the so-called woman of color's relationship to beauty does not merely replicate the white woman's relationship to beauty, even if one were to understand beauty as a discourse of abjection for all women. Cheng contends that the effects produced by the intersection of race, gender, and aesthetics are not merely additive, but rather interlocking and, at times, even contradictory (Cheng, 192).

Cheng's comments on The Bluest Eye are illustrative. She argues that Morrison gives not the proof but the etiology of self-hatred. According to Cheng, for a child coming to racial discrimination taught by her own family, how one tells the difference between love and hate becomes so entangled that love and hate both come to be fabricated and fraudulent. Cheng notes that learning racial-aesthetic discrimination, that is, acquiring a taste for Shirley Temple, thus requires radical emotional unlearning (Cheng, 199).

A discussion of racist beauty standards for women of color must also acknowledge the existence of women who are neither black nor white. In this case though, the discussion considers similar issues. De Casanova comments that in studies on the United States and other countries, unrealistic beauty standards are often implicated in low self-esteem and unhealthy behavior among adolescent girls. She notes that scholars in fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and public health have addressed this topic, placing teen girls' perceptions of their bodies in eth context of cause (impossibly thin and perfect media images of women) and effects (i.e., low self-esteem, rampant dieting, eating disorders.) (De Casanova, 287).

However relatively few studies discuss in detail the differences in beauty ideals and body image between Black and white American women, possibly because of the many findings pointing to a greater prevalence of unrealistic ideals and eating disorders among white women. According to De Casanova, the studies on the topic of racial differences that do exist shed no light on how women who are neither Black nor white navigate the personal and social consequences of beauty standards. Her study found that adolescent women of Ecuador are able to consume media images and maintain a healthy distance and the ability to critically examine implicit messages. De Casanova concludes that if this pattern continues, the young women may be able to keep from developing the low self-esteem and eating disorders common among white North American adolescent girls (De Casanova, 305).