The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, explores the detrimental effects of the glorification of a certain image specifically to the black community. The images of “beauty” in this novel are exploited by the images of dolls, the images shown on television screens, and the images shown in movies. Dolls are a big part of society especially for kids and their perception of beauty. As a kid I played with Barbie dolls, she had blonde hair, blue eyes, skinny legs, slim waist, big boobs, pretty much what society thought was beautiful. I never saw an image of what real women look like in media until I became a teenager and the beauty norms changed. When I was maybe 8 years old, one of my friends was hosting an American Girl doll party and I was so excited because American Girl dolls were supposed to look like real girls and look like its owners. I remember going into American Girl doll and not being able to find a doll that looked like me, not one of them had light skin, curly hair, brown eyes, or glasses. As an eight year old, not being able to find a doll that was marketed as having a huge selection of different kinds of dolls, really hurt my self-esteem and caused me to think that I wasn’t pretty enough to have a doll look like me. Of course there were about 20 different kinds of white, blond hair, blue eye dolls that had different facial attributes like freckles or a mole but not one doll looked anything like me. I remember the catalog not having a big selection of black dolls either which just shows that companies truly hold the image of whiteness to the highest degree. Pecola in Morrison’s novel prays for blue eyes so that she can be called by her parents, “pretty-eyed Pecola”, and she wishes she can fit in with the other kids and their beauty. The images of dolls and the personification that these dolls take on when being played with, hold a great power over kids and their minds. Playing with dolls that are only white and are played with as being doctors or astronauts and not playing with black dolls and pretending they are doctors can seriously harm little black girls and their mindset. While reading the article by Debra T. Werrlein, the quote, “for power they need beauty, and for beauty they need whiteness”, really opened my eyes to the world of unfairness and marginalization of beauty in black communities. Whiteness is glorified in society from toys, books, movies, TV shows, etc and even today that still holds some truth.