The Pain of Wanting to Be Beautiful

The Pain of Wanting to be Beautiful

"Starlight star bright" make me beautiful tonight. So many young girls gaze into the stars wishing that they could be beautiful so they would be accepted at school, as well as loved and acknowledged more. Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is no different than any other little girl. She too wants to be beautiful. America has set the standards that to be beautiful one must have " blue eyes, blonde hair, and white skin" according to Wilfred D. Samuels Toni Morrison (10). This perception of beauty leads Pecola to insanity because just as society cannot accept a little ugly black girl neither can she.

Children will always be children and the playground will always be a place where they tease and taunt one another. Pecola is unlike the other children; she does not participate in the teasing, she is the brunt of all the criticism because she is not only black but ugly too. On the other hand, there is Maureen Peal. Maureen is not white but is light- skinned therefore, accepted by everyone; the “ black boys didn’t trip her; the white boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth [at her and] the black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink…”(Morrison 62). Everyone was nice to Maureen regardless of their race and her own. One day Pecola’s dream of acceptance is granted when Maureen rescues her from the taunting of the boys on the playground. During their short-term superficial friendship Maureen does not fail to point out that Pecola looks like a movie character that “hates her mother because she is black and ugly”(Morrison 57). Karen Carmean in her book Toni Morrison’s World of Fiction makes the point that Maureen has succumbed to the “traditional white associations of darkness with ugliness”(Carmean 21). This means that Maureen has accepted the American standards of to be black is to be ugly. Maureen’s true reason for being Pecola’s friend is revealed when Pecola does not give in to Maureen when she asks personal questions of Pecola's life. It is at this point that Maureen does like all the other children do and taunt Pecola with “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos”(Morrison 73). Maureen’s words further emphasize to Pecola that she is ugly because she is black and the only way for her to be happy is if she were beautiful. The key to being beautiful is for her to have “the thing that made [Maureen] beautiful and not [her]” (Morrison 74). This "thing" that Pecola wishes for is the beauty of light skin. It is impossible for even the young children to look past Pecola’s ugliness and skin color and accept her therefore unfortunately she will never be happy.

Pecola’s community does not accept her as well. The storekeeper Mr. Yacobowski cannot even be helpful towards her. When Pecola enters his store he does not even see her but why should he “there is nothing for him to see, she is just a “little black girl”(Morrison 48). Finally, when he does see her he acknowledges her with a crooked finger and "phlegm and impatience...in his voice"(Morrison 49). Mr. Yacobowski acknowledging her with a disgruntled voice it cannot bother him by Pecola. Cynthia A Davis in her essay in Toni Morrison for the Contemporary Literary Criticism states that “blacks are visible to white culture only insofar as [they] serve its needs”(218). Therefore, the very little acknowledgement Pecola did receive from Mr. Yacobowski was primarily for his benefit