Wednesday, November 2, 2011

An Exploration of Ugliness Through The Bluest Eye

It is an unfortunate predicament that America is a country that is so infatuated with the idea of ‘beauty’. I say idea, but in some ways I mean notion, because I believe that our concept of what constitutes beauty is at the very least flawed. Our barometer for what defines beauty seems to be, for the most part, dominated by gorgeous actresses, cologne ads with half-naked men, and paid advertisements that promote diet pills and slender figures.


And I think part of the problem lies in the fact that our country is rooted in such ugliness to begin with – slavery, racism, sexism and misogyny have all run rampant throughout history of America. All of these are inherently ‘ugly’ parts of America’s identity that have certainly placed an indelible mark on our culture and our history. To some degree, it’s impossible for us to separate ourselves from these issues because they are such an important part of our history even if though we may not have been a part of that history. So things like race, sex and religious background are all things that we put into consideration when we think about something like beauty.

Which certainly relates to the issue of beauty as it is presented in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, especially as it relates to race. In the novel, beauty is undoubtedly only skin deep. It is something that white people – and especially those with blue eyes – possess, and that black people are seemingly cursed to live without.

And yet, it seems to have little to do with skin color so much as it does social constructions. Towards the beginning of chapter 3, Morrison describes the poor black family that is the Breedloves and their decision to live in a storefront. “They lived there because they were black,” she writes, “and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly… Their ugliness was unique. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly” (38). Here, we see just one early effort to define ‘ugliness’ in Morrison’s novel. Although the family is poor and black, they aren’t necessarily labeled ugly because of those attributes; rather, they are labeled ugly because they fervently believe that they are ugly. They are the ones labeling themselves as such because they have forced themselves to believe that ‘beauty’ and, in some ways, affluence are defined by the color of your skin, and therefore unattainable.

And yet this ‘ugliness’ defines them beyond their own self-deprecating definitions. They are inherently cruel, seemingly because the world has made them that way, and they are destructive. Because they believe they are ugly, they act in ugly ways, seemingly out of spite for themselves. Mrs. Breedlove and Cholly fight because they want to reinforce a life of ugliness – a life that they have invariably been pigeonholed into.

And yet Morrison’s explorations of ‘ugliness’ only reaffirm our flawed notions of ‘beauty’. 'Beauty’, at least in Morrison’s novel, is so firmly external that it is internally and emotionally devastating to those that don’t conceive of themselves as ‘beautiful’.


How do you think our flawed notions of ‘beauty’ impact our everyday lives?

1 comment:

  1. The flawed "beauty" notion is everywhere. I think it would be most relevant to people who do beautiful things but aren't considered physically appealing. What's inside is certainly not as important as what's outside in American society, (something that's very, very warped). In the case of Pecola, she never even gets a chance because she is labeled as ugly from the day she was born, as her race was lower on the class ladder. Because of the dependence on physical beauty, she is confined to a life of stares and social opposition.

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