A new magazine is issued featuring an elite celebrity advertising a particular brand’s fashion item. Within a few days, the product is sold out and replicas of the original item are released in different stores. This is the current fad in society and increasingly more people conform to this trend until the vogue shifts and the cycle repeats. Beyond the world of fashion, humans generally have a tendency to gear their interests to the things that are deemed “normal” and favored by the majority of their surroundings. Under this circumstance, humans are vulnerable to social influence, though many are unaware of the values they sacrifice in the process. It is the African-American literature, The Bluest Eye, which uncovers the dangers of aspiring …show more content…
Notably, certain black characters lose their identity as they dismiss their African-American roots as a means to assimilate into a white-oriented society. In addition, by commending white beauty ideals, whiteness becomes the paragon of beauty to these characters, consequently lowering their self-esteem. Finally, by juxtaposing a black family that ignores white beauty standards with a family that centres their lives on the impossible quest to be perceived “white,” it is made clear that the fervent desire for conformity has the power to destroy meaningful relationships. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison conveys that adhering to societal ideals is a threshold of one’s loss of identity. This is achieved through the use of the cleanliness and dirtiness motif. In the novel, cleanliness is associated with whiteness and thereby the embodiment of beauty, whereas dirtiness is tied to blackness, a feature adjudged to be the culprit of one’s ugliness. Given this fact, Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove, black characters that yearn to imitate the lives of white families, are excessively concerned with …show more content…
In the novel, the black characters’ exposure to the collective glorification of prominent white figures instills a belief that blue eyes are the paragon of beauty. This in turn engenders antipathy towards their own black image, lowering their self-esteem. For instance, Mrs. Breedlove’s daughter, Pecola, conceives whiteness as the emblem of beauty when she is finally convinced by her peers to purchase a “Mary Jane” candy. Morrison describes the candy by writing, “Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture of little Mary Jane. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. To Pecola they are simply pretty. . . She feels the inexplicable shame ebb” (50). The warm diction used to describe Mary Jane, including the words “gentle,” “white,” and “comfort,” denote a praiseworthy figure that contrasts Pecola’s dirty and impoverished state. Thrived in insecurity due to the white girl’s flattering persona, Pecola resorts to self-contempt as she does not appear the same way as Mary Jane. In fact, shortly after, a metaphor is used that compares Pecola to a dandelion, a nuisance which she personally finds beautiful though the majority of people disagree. Morrison writes, “Dandelions. A