Free Bluest Eye Essays - Learning to Hate

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The Bluest Eye - Learning to Hate

Many American's today are not satisfied with their physical appearance. They do not feel that they are as beautiful as the women on television or in magazines. The media is brainwashing American females that if they are not slim and have blonde hair and blue eyes, they are not beautiful. This causes women not only to hate the ideal females, but also hate themselves. In Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye two of her main characters, Claudia and Pecola show hatred toward others, and themselves because they are not as beautiful as the supreme females.

Claudia's hatred starts at the beginning of the novel when she and her sister are staring at Rosemary Villanucci. Rosemary has what Claudia and Frieda want. They want the things that white people have. "We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth."(Morrison, p.9) Claudia and Frieda hate Rosemary because she has all of the things that Claudia and Frieda will never have or be, particularly Rosemary's white skin. This forces a feeling of self-hatred for being black upon the girls.

You can see Claudia's hatred again when she receives a white baby doll for Christmas. Instead of adoring and cradling the new gift, as most other children would have done, she mutilated and destroyed the doll. "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window sign - all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. `Here,' they said, 'this is beautiful, and if you are on this day `worthy' you may have it.'" (Morrison p. 20-21) She hated the doll's blonde hair and blue eyes staring back at her, reminding her of how different she looked from the doll. She knew that she was wrong for destroying the doll, but she could not refrain herself from doing it. The doll, symbolized the perfect girl, and she knew she was very far from looking like her. In Emily Prager's essay "Our Barbies, Ourselves", she "reveals the damaging effect of a doll that establishes such an impossible standard of physical perfection for little girls.

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