The Bluest Eye

((Women sexualized in Media: this is the main advertisement on Abercombie.com. Clothes do not even appear in the picture.))
Despite reminders to “not judge a book by its cover,” appearance changes the way people treat others. Instantly people make both conscious and subconscious associations with a certain appearance whether it is clothing style, hair cut, skin color, or body type. After all, if appearance never mattered then it would not be necessary to dress up for special occasions or for times that first impressions are important such as an interview. Logan discusses one example of an American beauty norm (blond hair and blue-eyes), but unnatural and computer enhanced images of all hair colors of woman run rampant throughout American media. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola is told she is ugly from “every billboard, every movie, [and] every glance”(Morrison 38). While not so extreme, even today women are degraded as sex objects in just about every add in magazines and billboards. I did not believe that this was true until I worked on a project about images of women in the media a few years ago. Even ads that one would not expect to be sexualized, like a car or shoe ad, contain scantily clothed women with hidden phallic symbols. Pecola experiences not only such “bodily stigmas of ugliness and feminitity” but also “the tribal stigma of being an African American” (Bump 192). Throughout the novel, it seems that many of her problems stem from self-esteem issues caused by wanting to conform to the images of a white person. At the end of the story, she asks Elihue Whitcomb for blue eyes one last time. And in the end he writes to God “I did what You did not, could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her” (Morrison 182). Thus we find that the need to fit in and to shape our appearances to the societal norm really amount to a desire for real love.
((Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: one cannot reach self-actualization without meeting basic needs))
The issue of love coincides with both issues of racism and judging by appearances. The black women in 1941 assumed that their husbands would eventually leave them, and they wonder how to “get somebody to love you”(Morrison 32). If a person has never been exposed to love based upon compassion and caring, then one may take this approach to force someone’s love. The main issue for the black individuals, however, was the danger in getting too attached. The culture of the novel takes loving with detachment to the extreme. In discussing children, for instance, one finds that the “cat will always know that he is her affection” (Morrison 86). Fear of separation and emptiness compels people to suppress love and emotions in order to protect themselves emotionally. Cholly also fears attachment, in a more twisted way, when he has “fears that [Darlene] would not like him, and fear that she would” (Morrison 45). Similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I think that if the basic needs such as food, shelter, and decent work are not met, then one cannot love with compassion or use the sympathetic imagination. Indeed, Pecola struggles to use her sympathetic imagination to care about a doll and she can “not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother”(Morrison 20).

((Meringue Pie has no emotion and dehumanizes Maureen))
Without love, or with too much detached love, it is easy to dehumanize individuals and continue prejudices and racism. I know someone, for example, that always nicknames people she does not like. Just as Freida changes Maureen Peal’s name to “Meringue Pie,” I notice that when my friend uses nicknames such as “sleezy” and “lamp boy,” it is much easier to insult the nicknamed person and forget about his or her humanity.

Furthermore, being born into institutionalized racism creates a backward society. The characters throughout the Bluest Eye, for example, often express hatred toward those that they care about rather than the people that are hurting them. They express anger at themselves and at the world, probably a result of pity and fear. If we perpetuate ignorant stereotypes, then we continue prejudices. It is society that must be feared, then. As Morrison asserts, “the Thing to fear was the Thing that made [Maureen Peal] beautiful, and not us” (Morrison 74).