Racialized Beauty

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“Racialized Beauty: Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye” by Esti Sugiharti informs readers on how Morrison challenges the Western standards of beauty and reveals how this concept was constructed socially. Sugiharti mentions that Morrison’s points out that if white beauty standards are used in society, then the value of blackness would be diminished; however, the novel tends to override that tendency. The author tells readers how the ideal representation of beauty for women, specifically, is light skin and blue eyes, which for women of color is less possible to achieve than white woman (Sugaharti, 2002). This is clearly shown throughout the story with the characters of the book trying to conform to the Western standard of beauty. An example of this …show more content…

Despite her inability to get blue eyes, she does not achieve the social symbol of white beauty and does not come anywhere near the ideal representation of beauty. Sugiharti also talks about how not all the black characters agreed with the concept of the Western standard of beauty and the example she gave was an African-American girl named Claudia (Sugaharti, 2002). Claudia is shown in the story as someone who refuses to conform to the Western beauty standard and is happy in her own skin. In The Bluest Eye, Claudia is used to suggest that some people of color are able to fight the promotion of Western beauty standards found within society, while others are left behind as victims of this oppression. The article, “Racialized Beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye” by Esti Sugiharti gives a thorough explanation of the effect of Western beauty standards upon people of color which is clearly depicted throughout the novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison (Sugaharti, …show more content…

He introduces a character from the book named Maureen who gave an accurate but incomplete summary of the film, based on Fannie Hurst's 1933 bestseller, illustrating her and her community's adoption of Hollywood's image of beauty: "black" is” ugly," "mulatto" is "pretty," showing that a white child actress named Shirley Temple is still prettier (Bishop). Shirley Temple was the main representative of Hollywood’s image of beauty that shaped the self-images of the novel's black community in general and the Breedlove family in particular. Bishop talks about how her reference to the movie shows an illustration of how white cultural values shape the black community's idea of physical beauty. He goes further into the connection between the movie and the novel by talking about the similarity between the mother in the film called Aunt Delilah and Pauline Breedlove from the novel. Bishop talks about how Pauline was an avid moviegoer and has imbibed Hollywood's implicitly white version of beauty (Bishop). However, her daughter Pecola who is repeatedly described as "black" and ugly" is shown to have let down her mother for not measuring up to the standards of beauty in the eyes of Hollywood and looking like the pretty light-skinned daughter in the film, as referenced in the

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