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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This is a 5 page paper that provides an overview of Morrison's "The Bluest Eye". Textual evidence is cited to show how standards of beauty undermine young women's self esteem. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KW60_KFbluest.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
insidious social ill, which is the impact that societal standards of beauty have upon the self esteem of young women. Throughout the story, women are shaped psychologically and have their
perception of their self dramatically altered by exposure to the standards of beauty espoused by the society in which they live. As this story is set in the American Midwest
during the years after the Great Depression, the atmosphere is naturally one in which racial tensions are high. Thusly, beauty in the text is typically expressed in an ethnocentric fashion
which idealizes whiteness and disparages blackness as the polar extremes of beauty and ugliness, respectively. Throughout the novel, this ideal of beauty manifests in extreme psychological tension in the mind
of the main character, Pecola. This paper explores how Pecolas experiences with cultural standards of beauty impacts her self esteem and provides a model for how racially determined standards of
beauty are harmful to all people. This paragraph helps the student explore the standard of beauty set forth in the novel. Standards of beauty are centric to all societies
and civilizations. Judgments of aesthetic worth and value are existent throughout nature and evident even in other species of the animal kingdom besides humans. Nevertheless, these standards can become a
problem when they become conflated with racial characteristics. This is the scenario that is on display in Morrisons text. Every aspect of Pecolas world, from the people she interacts with
to the media she consumes, equates whiteness with beauty and blackness with ugliness. Pecola herself is a dark-skinned girl with dark eyes, and so naturally, as she comes to accept
this societal standard of beauty, she begins to wish for blue eyes. For Pecola, it is not simply a matter of making herself more beautiful by acquiring blue eyes, but
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