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White Beauty Standards In The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

485 Words2 Pages

There are multiple symbols that Morrison uses to symbolize this white beauty standard and different desires to obtain it such as milk, and Pecola’s obsession with specifically drinking milk from the Shirley Temple cup. During Pecola’s stay with Frieda and Claudia, this white beauty standard is seen furthermore when Claudia’s view on beauty is juxtaposed with Pecola’s. Unlike Pecola she wasn’t obsessed with drinking milk or playing with white dolls but white beauty standards still affected her. When it came to the baby dolls, Claudia “wanted to dismember them in order to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, and the desirability” for them. Claudia stated that “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison 20). Claudia was curious about what made them so special, more specifically what made them more special than her and what it was about the white baby dolls that made them more lovable than her. According to sociological images, “one manifestation of white supremacy is the use of whiteness as the beauty standard.

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