My Question: How do the beauty standards of the 1930s and 40s affect the young female characters in the bluest eye?

Bibliography: 

Roye, Susmita. “TONI MORRISON’S DISRUPTED GIRLS AND THEIR DISTURBED GIRLHOODS: ‘The Bluest Eye’ and ‘A Mercy.’” Callaloo, vol. 35, no. 1, 2012, pp. 212–227., www.jstor.org/stable/41412505. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

Werrlein, Debra T. “Not so Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye.” MELUS, vol. 30, no. 4, 2005, pp. 53–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029634. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

“‘Everyone Admires the Woman Who Has Beautiful Hair’: Mediating African American Beauty Standards in the 1920s and 1930s.” Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975, by Susannah Walker, University Press of Kentucky, 2007, pp. 47–84. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jcm09.7. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

Sugiharti, E. (n.d.). Racialised beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.https://www.erhsnyc.org/ourpages/auto/2012/5/10/49279726/Radicalised%20Beauty.pdf

Klotman, Phyllis R. “Dick-and-Jane and the Shirley Temple Sensibility in the Bluest Eye.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, 1979, pp. 123–125. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041475. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

This situation was about the empty space on the train. It’s called a situation because it’s something that happens to a lot of people. Many people can relate to this. There can be good situations and there can be bad situations. In this case it was about the empty seat on the train. 

The moving images match with the text of the book. Whenever she would talk about the darkness or the silence in the text there would be darkness in the movie. The images and text would match up and it really helped me understand more about what this situation was. When she talks about empty space I feel like it’s the topics or conversations we avoid talking about.  This empty space and this darkness is sort of awkward. You see that empty seat on the train but people start looking at you and judging you. They see you and make it very clear that you shouldn’t sit there and they just want to be alone. Maybe the people don’t actually feel that way but the facial expressions show that. 

This relates to rankies other stories in the text because she talks a lot about invisibility and this situation kinda reminds me of that. The way the people were being treated in this situation was if they were invisible and people didn’t care about how they felt. In this situation, Rankie was talking about a moment in which a woman on the train asked to switch seats with a man so she can sit next to her kid. The man looks at Rankie and basically asks without saying anything that she should get up. Its as if her opinion doesn’t matter. It would be nicer to politely ask the other person if they would get up but it’s rude since the lady asked the man and he ignored. In Rankies other text she talk about when she was in school and how a girl used to cheat off of her. She wondered if the teacher ever noticed their answers were the same and if she didn’t was it because she was not seen by the teacher. Or in another text she talk about a boy who was pushed and shoved by a man who just kept walking by and didn’t say anything. She wondered if it was because they were not seen. 

Overall I feel like reading the text and watching the film separately did help me understand it better. I felt like the images were very clear in conveying the message to the viewers.

The beginning story in the article by Rankie reminds me of some moments in the book we read by Toni Morrison as well as the book we read by Ralph Emmerson. Rankie Talks about a moment in school where a girl is asking her to show her tests answers so she can cheat. At this moment the author is thinking about her identity. She wonders why the teacher hasn’t noticed the cheating or that their answers were exactly the same. She thinks that maybe the teacher is oblivious to this or that she is invisible to the teacher. 

The beginning moment in the article really reminds me of The Invisible Man. she talks about how maybe the teacher didn’t even notice her at all. This is similar to how the invisible man feels. Throughout the book he is going through life feeling like he is invisible to the world. He wants to make himself known and feel recognized by others. This also reminds me of The Bluest Eye because the main characters in the book never really see representations of themselves in society. They are always surrounded by whiteness. Morrison describes a scene where one of the girls gets a white doll for Christmas but she tears it apart. She didn’t like the doll because it represented someone in society who was seen as more beautiful and the ideal person. Back in the day there was this idea that people who were born with blonde hair and blue eyes were more perfect or portrayed that way. This doll showed this representation but it didn’t represent all groups of people. 

In the book Citizen there is another moment where Rankie talks about identity and invisibility. She says “Yes, and you want it to stop, you want the child pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet, to be brushed off by the person that did not see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a reflection of himself” (Pg. 25). This reminds of the scene with the elderly couple in the book The Invisible Man. The couple is being kicked out of their apartment for who they are and the color of their skin. The invisible man wants this couple to be able to go back and live in their apartment. He realizes the importance of these people and what this eviction stands for. He see’s this white city officials kicking them out and leaving them on the street with no good reason. This relates to the quote because these city officials said that they didn’t want to do this and they could have stopped but they didn’t. Instead they threw these old couples possessions onto the streets like it was nothing and they didn’t care. This is part of Rankie point about being seen and wanting to be recognized and not forgotten. This old couple was being treated like they didn’t exist and their life didn’t matter. This also connects to the character Pecola in Morrison’s book. Pecola feels like she is not important or beautiful because of what society has told her and because  of what people have said or done to her. Pecola along with the invisible man and this couple feel like they’re hidden from the world. They feel this way because people treat them this way and just walk over them without a care.

There are lots of people who stop Pecola from flowering and being her best. We have the boys who bullied her, Maureen and Junior. Some of these people were pretending to be good innocent people. They manipulated Pecola because maybe they thought she was weak.

The boys who bullied her were making fun of her because they heard her dad sleeps naked They were calling her names based on the color of her skin and the way her dad sleeps. It made Pecola cry and feel bad for something that wasn’t her fault. This situation with her dad was something she couldn’t control. Freida, Claudia, and Maureen step in to help her and make the bullies go away. Pecola starts to feel better about herself knowing some people are there for her and care about what was going on.

Maureen, who was one of the people who helped, offered to buy Pecola ice cream as a friendly gesture. But after they get the ice cream Maureen starts to interrogate Pecola about her dad and seeing him naked. Maureen starts to repeat herself over and over asking the same questions to Pecola. It upsets Pecola because she thought she could trust Maureen. This is why Pecola is stopped from being her best because she is conflicted about who’s on her side and who isn’t. She doesn’t know what’s the truth and what isn’t.

The last person is Junior. He pretends to be a nice friendly cat person. He wants to show Pecola his cats but instead tries to kidnap her. Pecola runs away and goes home where she feels safer. Pecola is being misled by certain people and she seems like someone who is very trusting. She goes along with people because she is too nice and can’t really speak up for herself. We see this in the scene when she gets her period for the first time but is afraid to tell Frieda and Claudia’s mom in fear of getting yelled at. Pecola was already in trouble for drinking 3 quarts of milk in a day so that was another reason was afraid to say anything.

It seems like people are trying to destroy any self-confidence she has for herself. Her parents are always yelling at her and people are telling her she’s not beautiful. It makes her self esteem go down and feel like this happening to her because of the color of her skin. Pecola sees the differences in the way she is treated and the way the white kids are treated. All of this makes her feel a certain way about herself. It probably makes her feel like she isn’t loved by many people. These things are what stops her from flowering because she is always being put down by others and she can’t grow into the person she wants to be. Pecola sees herself differently from the way some of these people view her but sometimes these people make her lose her sense of self.

In chapter 13 of the book the invisible man stumbles upon some things just thrown into the sidewalk. At first glance he thinks it’s just junk. Then he sees and old woman crying and pointing at the items. He realizes that they are her possessions and are being thrown out by two white men. 

After sticking around for a while he learns that the old couple is being evicted and sees there’s something wrong about that. He starts to look at the items on the ground and memories are coming back to him. When he looks at the possessions closely he now realizes how this couple feels. He says “And it was as though I was being dispossessed of some painful yet precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something confounding like a rotted tooth that one would rather suffer indefinitely than endure the short, violent eruption of pain that would mark its removal” (Pg. 273). What he is saying here is that he feels like he is being deprived himself. He feels like he can relate because he treats the situation as if this was his own grandmother. He assumes that she was somebody’s mom because he sees the breast pump. 

Things start to get more chaotic when one of the white men strikes the old woman because she wanted to go back into the building and pray. The invisible man is angry at this and so is the crowd of people around. The crowd of people want to go and attack this man and The invisible man wants to do this at first too. But he stops himself and the crowd and says “We’re a law-abiding people” (Pg. 275). He doesn’t want the crowd to fight fire with fire because he knows that they will be the ones to get arrested despite the fact that the white man struck first. He knows that you can’t solve this situation with violence because who does that help. He wants to help this old couple in a nice and friendly manner. The longer he’s there he realizes how important these items are and that they’re not just junk but something that defines a person. Something that shows who they are and he wants to make sure this couple keeps their items. 

The invisible man feels connected to these possessions because not only do they have pieces of African American culture but they say something about society. The way these possessions are just thrown out without a care sort of shows the way black people were being treated. Towards the end of this situation its not just about the couple anymore but about racial discrimination. The invisible man says “So who’s being dispossessed? Can it be us?” (Pg 279). He is saying that all of us are going through this, it’s not just involving this old couple, it’s involving all black people. Black people have been oppressed for so long and this issue of oppression is still going on today. In this scene the more the invisible man explorers the more he learns what’s happening and the real actions that are taking place.