Skin Colour and Beauty in Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye

In Toni Morrison's book, The Bluest Eye, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a great example of how one's loss of innocence becomes their own mental disorder. The story is about three girls who lose their true purity during the late Great Depression Era. Claudia Macteer is the main character who narrated the darkest time in not her own, but her sister and their friend Pecola. The Macteer sisters were poor children whose parents ran a boarding house, where a man and his daughter took refuge. The story is full of personified themes that push the seriousness of how the children lost their purity and gravitated to the idea of whiteness. The children were told they were beautiful but felt that they were left out of the societies realm. The only looks of beauty that they had were Sherly Temple and other white woman fixations, which did not help their self-esteem.

The character Pecola is based on a girl whom Toni Morrison met when she was 11 years old. Through the eyes of a fictional character Claudia Macteer, the author could escape to a childhood that gave the girls the worst outlook on life. Claudia and other little girls, discussed the assumption of whether or not there was a God, which for a ten year old's is too much to fathom. Claudia believed that god was real, but the little girl's playmate Pecola disagreed. There was a huge discrepancy between what was beauty and not. The girls started to resent the looks that god gave them and strive for the beauty standards of the western white world.

The reason was that the Pecola wanted blue eyes, to escape the harsh conditions of her own life. The child wanted the blue eyes because of the sudden for of purity that it would bring to her life. Claudia her reaction as well as her sister's as startled and confused of how she would come up with such a concept. Pecola prayed for these metaphoric blue eyes for two years until she realized they were not going to happen. The main character was appealed; she could not understand why her playmate could not see her own beauty within. Let alone why would she aspire to have the most obvious feature that usually Caucasian possess.

When Claudia would bring up her friend who wanted blue eyes she was sad. The memory that this little black girl stayed with girls for the rest of her life. Pecola would suffer from many burdens that took away her innocence, such as rape. The girl was raped by her own father, leaving her pregnant at the age of eleven. She even gave birth and lost the baby due to prematurity at birth. Morrison wrote this book in 1965 because of the movements that rose within the women and the blacks in the area. The Bluest Eye was a peak of the "Black is beautiful" movement, Morrison revealed why the movement was special. The characters in the bluest eye show exactly why such a movement was needed, because of the lack of self-awareness.

To a certain degree, each character have some points of admiration for their blackness. Majority of the characters experienced self-loathing because their features are too apparent. Ohers, such as Geraldine, lived their whole lives keeping up appearances to those of the higher race.

When it comes to the terms of identity, it is true that people live in a world that correlates with who they really are. People in the black community see themselves as group that is full of self-loath and harsh treatment. Throughout history the children of this race forget that they are different and try to assimilate with the majority society. With movements, such as the Civil Rights and the Black Lives Matter, give the people of yesterday and today a way to come together. Per the Huffington Post, A 2008 study found that African-Americans actively seeking treatment didn't feel comfortable talking about their mental health with family members in fear of being called "crazy". Another cited by the American Psychiatric Association said that 85% of African-Americans most commonly deal with stress through prayer. Black people believe that to escape mental health they must pray and go to church.

Even so, they think that as if occupying the mind with a daily routine is the best way to get rid of the hideous emotions.

In reports to the census, 13.2 % of the U.S. population, or roughly 45.7 million people, identify themselves as Black or African American, per 2014 United States. People do not even consider themselves to be of the Black race anymore. They consider themselves so many different identities, it is now hard to differentiate who is who. Per the Census Bureau numbers, 2.5% identified as multiracial. Most people of color in this country believe that it is an honor to be of mixed race. They tend to believe that if people who deplete their blackness have more power. This represents an increase from 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, who identified themselves as Black/African-American in the 2010 Census. Mental illness is the problem that black people choose to ignore, and the reasons for it is the lack of identity.

Even throughout the internet, there are many sites that praise the racial mixing of blacks and other races. There places on the internet that help people even hide their blackness and get rid of who they are. Men and women try every day to relieve themselves of their best selves; given that people have tried to get rid of their features. The one-drop rule once served exclusively to identify anyone with any known African ancestry as black, and therefore subhuman; now, it's being used to excuse the absence of actual black people from historically white spaces and to allow white people to congratulate themselves on their open-mindedness." The people in society forget that not accepting yourself is a disability within itself.

One forgets that identity is a crucial part of who a person is, or the part they play in society. There have been claims that people do not want to be black, but want to be accepted as beautiful. In the story of The Bluest Eye people miss the bigger picture as to why racial identity is important. The people in this book were racists to themselves, they would give each other havoc for the color and features of each other. There was one character in the story named Pauline Breedlove, she was very mentally ill, and believed that she was ugly. The reason she thought that she was ugly, was because of the features that she possessed. She was a darker skinned woman with exaggerated black features. She would then turn the torment to her daughter Pecola, and left her daughter in a bind of depression when it came to her looks. Pecola Then turns to the girl next door, Rosemary Villanucci who was the girl that she wanted to be.

Rosemary Villanucci was the neighbor to the main character Claudia and her sister Freida Macteer. Pecola who was a boarder in the house of the Macteer's as a child, wanted to be just like Rosemary Villanucci. She was a little girl that mirrored what the celebrities in the late 1939. Rosemary had the blond hair and the blue eyes that Pecola began to worship. Maureen Peal was also someone that Pecola envied, for her features. She was a fair skinned black girl with blue eyes who accepted the new rank in their school as being the most beautiful. Pecola worshipped her and wanted to be just like her for she was wanted by the boys in their grade.

The reason that this literary work was picked, is because of the reality of how people let their inner identity become them. Black women in society live in a bubble that illustrates the seriousness of how the world views women of African origin. The author wanted people to see how the judgement of features and colors of individuals, drives a wedge in a person's reality. People bleach their skin, dye their hair, or even complete surgeries to aim for this beauty. The media in this book shows exactly how the world sees what is beautiful. Women in the nineteen thirties tried to mirror beauties such as Mae West who had the blond hair and the pale skin. She also wore dresses that showed off her shape and gave her a special type of elegance. Or Shirley Temple who was the innocent child, with pin-curled blonde hair, and the bluest eyes that no one had ever seen. Each show how the people of that generation do not differ for the people of today.

What is a stereotype? A stereotype is a cliché that collects a group of people in to one category, and makes them seem as if it is true for the whole group. The problem in the book was that the people saw a person with lighter skin as a better part of society. People who possessed the blood of the white a person where extolled and seen as a model citizen. The characters do not differ from reality of the black society, because the world knows that there is a higher power within a structure.

Even within the system of income the book highlights the best outlook that the characters have within their own lives. The society of African-American decent have not only a class system based on skin color, but wealth based promise. Characters such as Geraldine who was a middle-class black woman who prided herself on the materialistic possessions that she accumulated. She had children and people in the community saw her as very accomplished. She was a roaring stereotype to how people in the black community view the wealth of others. To excel in the black society, the stereotype is that they must be rich or have light skin. People do not realize that the stereotypes may have some truth within the source. Other stereotypes have shaped the society and given the best assumption that blacks are very much less aware of themselves.

The disability that Pecola most likely suffers from is depression from her surroundings. The protagonist suffers from the worst type of disability because of the lack of love and affection that her parents and others give her. At such a young age people forget that children need to not have a stigma of beauty behind them. The worst part of the situation in the book is that she was not able to stay a child because of the harsh views of the community. Being that she is given the cold shoulder from not only her family but her surroundings. In order to save a child, people need to leave out the negative connotations when it comes to beauty. Children should stay as such and that is what the author tries to highlight. The biggest problem in black society is that they are very problematic when it comes to the reality of how the world determines one's beauty.

Ultimately, beauty is in the eye of whom chooses to observe. People forget that everyone loses themselves; which bring upon a mental disease. The best response to social stigma is to gather the ideal of other and make sure that it improves the attitude of others. In order to get a healthier society, people must try to get a new understanding.

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