Intimacy with that "nasty" blackness good white girls stay away from is what they seek. To white and other nonblack consumers, this gives them a special flavor, an added spice. After all it is a very recent historical phenomenon for any white girl to be able to get some mileage out of flaunting her fascination and envy of blackness. The thing about envy is that it is always ready to destroy, erase, take over, and consume the desired object. That's exactly what Madonna attempts to do when she appropriates and commodifies aspects of black culture.
The Struggle for Society’s Acceptance Be careful what you wish for. In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a young colored girl named Pecola and her race are rejected by their community based on their physical appearance. The belief of Pecola’s time label black people ugly and different. To be beautiful, it is mandatory that one posses pale skin, yellow hair, and blue eyes. Brainwashed by society’s standards and demeaned by the white race, the black population struggles to fit the stereotypical image of perfection.
The author showed the extreme detachment Pecola has from society, caused by racial and life hardships. She associated having blue eyes like Shirley Temple, as beautiful. She felt that by being beautiful all of her problems would be solved. Pecola witnessed her drunken father and mother fight often, “She struggled between an overwhelming desire that one would kill the other, and a profound wish
In a small town in Ohio, beauty is only captured in white woman or in the deep blue of ones eye. The main character, Pecola, a young African American thriving to find beauty in her, does not have blue eyes. As the novel unfolds, the reader is lead to find Pecola as an ugly child. Pecola deals with the secret life of her family’s insecurities. Cholly, her father, is a raging alcoholic, who enjoys sex too much.
Pecola begins to believe the lie of racism: that to be black is to be "ugly," undeserving, and unloved. It is Shirley Temple and the Mary Jane on the wrapper of the candy by that name who are the models of lovable girls in Pecola's world. Pauline Puyat, a mixed blood Chippewa Indian, sees herself through the eyes of whites and thus learns to hate herself, desperately attempting to claim only her "half white." She has a vision of Jesus who "tells" her that "despite (her) deceptive features, (she) was not one speck of Indian but wholly white. He himself had dark hair although His eyes were blue as bottleglass, so I believed" (137).
Why? Answer: Because Mr. Plummer and I quote “Was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster.” Mr. Plummer was the one that gave him the very memory of his aunt having her hands held by a hook and standing on her toes on a stool, and being whipped even after blood was pouring from her veins. He was a cruel man that didn’t care about what happened to the slaves. He was so descriptive about Mr. Plummer because Mr. Plummer left a “scar” on him. He left an emotional scar that Frederick will never forget.
That is the reason why he puts them in their own world; “Women must be helped to stay in that beautiful world of theirs, lest ours gets worse” (Conrad 12) a more perfect world. Fueling the perpetual cycle of imperialism. The two significant women Heart of Darkness are Kurt’s Mistress and his Intended. The two women are characterized very differently. The African woman (the mistress) is strong, beautiful; striking and mysterious where as the Intended is colorless, lifeless; innocent and naive.
However the novel shows us how white skin and blue eyes are glamourized as standard beauty and consequently the value of dark skin is diminished. Naomi Wolf argues that 1“beauty as a normative value is entirely socially constructed.” Wolf in her book, ‘The Beauty Myth’ relates how there is a constant pressure on women to conform to an idealized concept of female beauty. The book examines “beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women.” Since this ideal beauty is largely depicted by light skin, blue eyes and blond hair it becomes difficult for a colored woman to achieve it. 2Paul.C Taylor points out: “a white dominated culture has radicalized beauty; that it has defined beauty per se in terms of physical features that the people we consider white [people ] are more likely to have………..” Morrison’s novel traces the time when the racially dominant white society in America believed and tried to instill that those who were black with dark skin and rough curly hair was inevitably ugly and unpleasant. However the book also points out that such a conviction was not only restricted to the white community but even the blacks imbibed a similar kind of disgust about their external
The cycle continues with Grange’s son, Brownfield, as he brutally abuses his wife and children—murdering his wife in the end. Ruth, Brownfield’s daughter, is able to beat the odds and break the sequence of domestic abuse and racism. Several factors prompt the victimization of women illustrated throughout the novel. The main force is the need for male dominance and power, a desire that results from societal oppression (racism), which the African American men face in the South. All of the characters victimized by racism, as well as domestic violence, are negatively impacted.
* Simon Legree: A cruel slave owner whose name has become synonymous with greed. His goal is to demoralize Tom and break him of his religious faith; he eventually orders Tom whipped to death out of frustration for his slave's unbreakable belief in God. The novel reveals that, as a young man, he had abandoned his sickly mother for a life at sea, and ignored her letter to see her one last time at her deathbed. He sexually exploits Cassy, who despises him, and later sets his designs on Emmeline. III.