Racial Beauty Standards In "The Bluest Eye"

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with the beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.

Claudia tries to resist loving white girls that her sister, Frieda, and friend, Pecola, admires for their beautiful features--blonde hair and blue eyes. Claudia does not believe that Frieda and Pecola should admire girls who do not look like them physically. Unable to convince Frieda and Pecola that white girls are not the only standard of beauty, Claudia begins to have intense feelings of resentment and anger toward the white beauty standard:

"I couldn't join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley.

Not because she was cute, but because she danced with Bojangles,

who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have

been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me. Instead he was enjoying,

sharing, giving a lovely dance thing with one of those little white

girls whose socks never slid down their heels (19 Morrison)."

In this quote Claudia's anger toward Shirley Temple is born out of her desire to have a personal and intimate relationship with a person of her race and background. Claudia says Bojangles is "[her] friend, [her] uncle and [her] daddy"; she expresses anger over someone of her race being depicted in a relationship "sharing" a moment of affection, the "giving a [of a] lovely dance thing." Claudia wants Bojangles to be her mentor, companion and loving father figure that helps her learn and grow as a person or as a dancer. She does not think that Shirley Temple should have Bojangles as her mentor or guide in life especially since a white girl does not share in the experience of what it means to be black. Bojangles presence with Shirley Temple emphasizes for Claudia how white girls are deserving of the attention Bojangles gives the white girl because she does not let "her socks slide down their heels." Claudia suggests the sock image communicates that white girls know how to be a proper girl by keeping up the appearance of neatness and prettiness. Claudia displays how the movies work to create images of beauty and associate them with white girls by depicting Bojangles as a friend and father figure who lovingly teaches the proper, neat and pretty girl (the white girl) how to "soft-shoe it" as a reward for being tidy and clean.

The conflation of beauty with whiteness leads Claudia to transfer her hate of white girls to white dolls. Why does Claudia transfer her anger towards her white doll? Claudia's anger becomes directed at the white dolls because she can express her anger in a physically violent way that she can't express with real white girls because she would be punished. Claudia outlines her violent resistance to accepting the white doll as pretty and valuable:

"I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was

made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability

that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls,

shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs--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 (21 Morrison)."

Claudia outlines how the white features are the treasured qualities of the culture appearing in "shops, magazines, newspapers and window signs" which communicate all girls want to possess whether in a doll form or actually physically possess those features. The media tells Claudia that she should not only

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