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The article, Toddlers and Tiaras written by Skip Hollandsworth first came about in the August 2011 issue of Good Housekeeping. The article tells us about the world of child pageantry and attempts to convince the readers that the girls participating are being exploited and hypersexualized on stage. He also suggests that some parents are to blame referring to the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls quoting “...parents who put their daughters in pageants can contribute “in very direct and concrete ways” to “the precocious sexualization” of their daughters (Hollandsworth 493). The author uses imagery, professional references, and shadowing the pageant world to put this article together and give the readers
She wrote that her inspiration for the story was a conversation she had had when she was little with another little black girl who had a fascination with blue eyes, much like her character Pecola Breedlove. Morrison is known for her stories that circle around how racism and misogyny affect black women. For The Bluest Eye, a little girl named Pecola Breedlove goes insane from the inhumane treatment she faces as an eleven-year-old african american girl in the Great Depression. There are many points in the book where she is dehumanized and treated less than dirt, even by her own parents. Her father in a bid to feel in control despite how much white men have controlled him, rapes his daughter and she becomes pregnant with his child.
The song represents a journey to self-acceptance of not only one’s hair, but as well as self-acceptance of yourself as an African American Woman. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola, a young African-American in the 1960’s experiences the same shame that comes with being black in a White America. The song, uncovers this for
Tori Morrison succeeds at getting the awareness out about the impact of internalized racism, and how far people go when it comes to wanting to change their appearance. During the times in the Bluest Eye, according to society, to look beautiful, you had to be white or light skin with blue eyes. The darker shade of brown you were the uglier and poorer you seemed to people. For example, when Pecola was asked by a boy, Junior, to go into his house to see his cat. After the boy tortures the cat and eventually killing it, his mother comes into the door.
Despite the differences between these novels, they both explore how people respond to difficult--and potentially damaging--circumstances. Although the conflicts in The Bluest Eye are of the same serious nature, the context is quite different. In The Bluest Eye, fall of 1941, just after the Great Depression, in Lorain, Ohio. Nine-year-old Claudia and her 10-year-old sister, Frieda, live with their parents in an "old, cold and green" house ,what they lack in money they make up for in love. The MacTeers decide to take in a boarder named Mr. Henry, and also at the same time, they also take in young Pecola Breedlove, quiet, awkward girl who loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that her own blackness is inherently ugly.
Likewise, Morrison also uses symbolism for the duration of the novel to establish how people can judge a person based on their economic standing. For instance, symbolism is represented through the blue eyes that is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. The blue eyes represent the idealistic white middle class life that Pecola dreams of having since white people commonly have blue eyes. The reader can infer this suggestion because whenever Pecola is experiencing bad things she wishes to have blue eyes. Morrison writes, "If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too…Each night, without fail, she prayed for the blue eyes…
The first piece in my portfolio is a piece of Pecola with blue eyes. One of the overarching ideas presented throughout The Bluest Eye is that white features, specifically blue eyes, is the epitome of physical beauty. Throughout the book, there is vivid visual imagery of blue eyes such as those of “lovely Mary Jane” (Morrison 50). The use of the word lovely further correlates her physical appearance and blue eyes with beauty. This causes Pecola to crave blue eyes so desperately that “every night, without fail, she prayed” in order to gain what she and everyone else unanimously view as beauty (46).
We learn in Chapter 1 Pecola loves to drink out of the Macteer’s Shirley Temple cup. Pecola is so fascinated with the idea of having blonde hair with blue eyes, which is basically what a perfect, beautiful,
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison offers multiple perspectives to help explain the intensity of racism and what it means to be oppressed and degraded in society. Through the eyes of various characters, readers are taken on a journey during the 1940s to demonstrate how each black character copes with the unfair standards and beliefs that society has. While some of the characters internalize self-hatred and have the desire to be someone else, others do not wish to change themselves to fit into the societal standards. Throughout the novel, there are clear and distinct remarks that are made to help distinguish the difference between white characters and black characters which is quite crucial. Morrison uses dirt and cleanliness to symbolize how society
The purpose of the book is to show how a young girl felt in the society that was around her and how she wanted to change due to the what the culture of the world at that time was saying. The Bluest Eye is a book about a nine year old girl, Claudia Macteer and her sister Frieda who take in Mr. Henry who is a tenant at the house and Pecola Breedove, a foster child. Pecola is a young girl who is described as a dark skin, curly hair and, brown eyed girl. Pecola hates her appearance and thinks she is ugly she desires to have blonde hair and blue
It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the
Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.
Destructive Nature of Racialised Beauty Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. In this novel, Toni Morrison shows how societies racist and false beliefs on beauty can be seriously destructive if believed and taken to heart. Toni Morrison displays the destructive nature of racialised beauty through the character in the novel named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola lacks self esteem and believes that she is the blackest and ugliest girl, and she believes that white is the only beautiful race.
Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world.
Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted
