Like most books, Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye includes a pivotal scene where an eleven year old girl is welcomed into the home of three sex workers. You remember reading about that trope in your high school English class, right? In reality, this provocative interaction between Pecola, Poland, China, and Marie shows Pecola an alternative form of physical beauty that is more carefree and motivated by the women’s sexually liberated lifestyle.
Pecola’s interaction with the three sex workers revolves around their freedom from standards of beauty, freedom from femininity, and freedom of sexuality. However, the casual reader might think from the descriptions of China getting ready that she desires beauty in the same way other female characters throughout the novel. Morrison writes, “China had changed her mind about the bangs… She was adept at creating a number of hair styles, but each left her with a pinched and harassed look. Then she applied makeup heavily… Oriental eyebrows and an evilly slashed mouth” (57-58). China takes actions to control her physical appearance, but her vanity is different than other characters’ in the novel. For instance, Morrison describes that black women like Geraldine, “hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free… they never cover the entire mouth [with lipstick] for fear of lips too thick” (83). Women like Geraldine represented in the novel take efforts to make sure their beauty hides their blackness. However, the only concern China has about her hair is that she doesn’t look “pinched or harassed;” she does not want to look weak or inferior. She is a free woman and intends to look that way. Unlike the ideas of femininity that call for women to look beautiful to appease a man, China employs her physical beauty to make herself look strong – a trait women are never encouraged to emulate – even adorning an “evilly slashed mouth.” She does not primp herself to look “white” or even appealing. In addition to the above excerpt, the novel also mentions how “China [sat] in a pale-green kitchen chair, forever and forever curling her hair” (52). Rather than straightening her hair to emulate a white woman’s hair texture, she curls her hair. China also deliciously takes her time while getting ready. China is free to fuss over her appearance “forever and forever” unlike women who have socially acceptable lifestyles. China’s life is not spent caring for someone else like a spouse, a child of her own, or a white woman’s child. Her profession gives her the free time to care for herself frivolously and in a way that is not tightly bound to social conformity.
Morrison employs the sex workers’ liberated primping to show the reader and alternative, and better relationship women can have with physical beauty. However, some may claim that Morrison vehemently objects to all physical beauty without exception, including the sex workers’ primping. She writes in the section Spring, “[Pauline] was introduced to… physical beauty. Probably one the most destructive ideas in in the history of human thought… [which] originated in envy, thrived in insecurity” (122). Morrison critiques physical beauty but only disapproves of it in its most common form. Pauline’s relationship with physical beauty is diametrically opposed to the sex workers’ more unusual relationship with it. Morrison writes that one of the problems with physical beauty is that it “thrive[s] in insecurity.” However to say that that China, Poland, and Marie’s beauty is “thriving” is a long shot. The women are described as old and fat (52); they do not fit the socially prescribed ideas of what it means to be beautiful. And though ugly, the women are confident, not insecure. Marie doesn’t care about her “bandy legs,” and believes she is attractive (53). Morrison asserts that the problem with physical beauty is that to look beautiful to others, a woman must first be insecure about her looks and desire outside validation. The sex workers don’t have this problem: they are “ugly,” confident women who can employ makeup and hair products either purely for their own pleasure and desires.
Toni Morrison bravely writes about the appealing aspects of sex work; not only do China, Poland, and Marie refuse to conform to certain standards of femininity and womanhood, but the primping China does do is for personal satisfaction rather than to appease the patriarchal, white-supremacist society. Readers and critics alike shouldn’t sell Toni Morrison short and ascribe the author a simplistic, “burn your bra, burn your makeup” second-wave feminist philosophy. Morrison’s writing is admirable because she explores the complexities of feminine physical beauty without automatically bashing women if they want to put on lipstick or curl their hair.
