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If the socially accepted image of beauty is the antithesis of your natural appearance, there are bound to be negative psychological effects. Toni Morrison explored this in The Bluest Eye. The victim, in The Bluest Eye was Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl who embodied the pain and internal struggle Black people have weathered in America. She and her family are undeniably Black in their appearance. The world they live in cannot tolerate them, cannot tolerate their Blackness. They are a constant reminder to their community and the nation of the terrible events that have transpired between Caucasians, and African Americans. They and the other members of their community have internalized assumptions of their immutable inferiority. Their thick lips, nappy hair, dark skin, and broad noses are ugly because Black is and forever will be ugly and of lesser value. You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question. The master said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw in fact, support for it leaning at them, from every billboard, every movie, every glance. 'Yes,' they had said. 'You are right'. pp. 38-39 Pecola was emotionally assaulted everyday by society, her parent's and her community. She was denied the opportunity to be a healthy mature woman from her birth. Her mother set the tone of her life when she made this statement at her birth, "But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly" p.126 Although Pecola's overall experience was exaggerated, the basic elements that made her life terrible, are reality for many Black girls today. The self hatred that exists in the novel, exists in the real world. On an episode of a comedy show on a Black television station, a dark skin Black woman made a comment that she could only get a date during Black History month. African Americans are aware of their hatred of themselves, but it has become a joke. If The Bluest Eye was set in the 1990's, Pecola would be psychologically worse off. We now have the means to change our eye color, and our hair to match the European standard of beauty. With color contacts and a perm, the assumption of immutable inferiority would be cemented forever within her consciousness. She would join fall into step with all the nose-trimmed, lipo-suctioned, weave headed, blue contact wearing, Black beauty's of the 90's. As an African-American female living in a country that still has a Euro-centric view of beauty I have had several experiences with Black people who felt they needed to make negative comments about my dark complexion. In first grade I was bussed out of my neighborhood to a an all white school. I had no problems with my white classmates, but on the bus I was attacked physically, and emotionally by Black children that spit on me, refused to sit with me, and even lied about an incident that occurred on the bus blaming me. They would shout comments about my ugliness pretending to be in a conversation. Personal items were stolen and thrown out the window. The bus driver (also Black ) did nothing to discourage it, and even laughed at the hateful treatment I received from the children who were just acting out cues they had received from society and their parents. Without fail every time I got off the bus, someone would kick me in my back, reflecting now I realize that they were doing more harm to themselves than me. Their attacks were aimed at me directly but indirectly aimed at themselves. The self-hatred has endured the 60's Black Pride movement and persists in today's society. The civil rights and Black Pride movements could not reverse the damage of hundreds of years self hate. |
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