Essay

Beauty Standard Through African-America Eyes
The American standard of beauty has many confusing, complex ideas. In order to follow what is considered physical attractiveness, require to know sociocultural rules. The Bluest Eye, Pecola and her mother, two African-American characters are driven by their consuming obsession to be white.
I- Beauty standards in our society
II- Mother’s needto feel beautiful
III- Pecola’s need to feel beautiful
IV- Psychological damage that Pecola’s mother’s transmitted to her
V- The Bluest Eye overall conclusion

Leidy Paola Duque Ruiz
Prof. Spottke
ENC 1102
12-November-2012
Beauty Standard through African-America Eyes
Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye. She portraits the reality of a miserable girl to emphasize verydiverse topics: the cost of beauty, and how black women live by showing how they suffer two stigmas, being a woman in a society that men still dominate and being black in a country where, despite all the rights, racism continues to prevail. The American standard of beauty has many confusing, complex ideas. In order to follow what is considered physical attractiveness, require to know socioculturalrules. The Bluest Eye, Pecola and her mother, two African-American characters are driven by their consuming obsession to be white.
The beauty and standards in the society showed by the author in the novel describes life in a black community in Lorain, Ohio in the 1940s. The terrible story of Pecola Breedlove points out a relation to the perfect story of the perfect American family; on the otherhand, readers can understand the novel on different levels: the focus the harmful effects of racism on the black community, on families and on African American individuals; and on the most affected character, a girl of only 12 years Pecola Breedlove. The narrator describes Pecola’s emotions, “Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness thatmade her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike" (Morrison 45). And currently in our society, body image includes many aspects, such as how we perceive ourselves and how we feel inside and outside of our bodies. Body image is something that we learn and that is constantly changing. Even those people who have a positive image of their bodies, they have days in which theyare not feeling so comfortable. Many people have felt mistrust and insecurity about their bodies at some point in their lives. These feelings are often fed by two perceptions, real and fictitious. These perseptions are transmitted by friends, family, and the media about how they should see themselves. Body image affects everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or sexual identityeven when these factors can have an impact on how we perceive image of th body. According to the article "The Evolution of Human Physical Attractiveness” the author Steven W Gangestad, talks about how conventionally physical attraction can be studied from a number of angles or by different perspectives, including general perceptions common to all human beings, cultural standards, and individualpreferences. In addition, the perception of attractiveness can have a significant effect. “People are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage” (Gangestad 530). Human interpretation of beauty has been modified by social evolution, each day trends and physical attractiveness are becoming more demanded and pressured by society.
In the novel,the mother’s need to feel beautiful is described by how she learns to despise herself while she goes to the movies to see romantic films of Jean Harlow, a popular blonde woman who was the main character on many films of the1940s. This contempt for her race causes her to despise even her own daughter. Thus, Toni Morrison shows a group of people, the African American community, as her fully absorbed...