She has a dangerously poor self-image and is thus obsessed with the desire to obtain blue eyes. “It occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison, 46). Pecola fervently prays for the impossible. She attributes the only solution to improve her life with the physical change of her eye color. Pecola has developed this perception of beauty from the idolized objects in her life.
Life as Plastic Both today and yesterday's society have created a mold that young women are expected to fit in to. Tall, tan and slender girls are often looked at as the beautiful members of society. The positive and wonderful qualities of both women and men are often overlooked because of physical appearance and image. Marge Piercy accurately portrays the unreachable standards placed on women to be beautiful from adolescence into adulthood by her use of fluctuating tone and effective symbolism in her poem “Barbie Doll”. The poem follows a young girl from her childhood to her adulthood in a third person omniscent point of view.
Ivan Panin once said, “ For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it,” meaning someone will see you, listen to you or someone will love you. I agree with the quote because the toughest part about life is deciding when to give up or to try harder. In The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison shows how Pecola, a poor black girl who believes she is ugly because she and her community base their ideals of beauty on "whiteness" giving up and not trying hard for her wish of the bluest eyes.
This film not only displays how the world expects teenage girls to act, but also how difficult it is for teenage girls to resist acting this way. Mean Girls is a perfect example of how girls, want to be like the plastics. You have the Queen Bee throughout the movie and every normal girl wishing and wanting to be like her. She’s like the Barbie, everyone wish they could
ZZ Packer displays the black Girl Scout troops hidden racial hatred for white people through ironic humor. She conveys hidden philosophical messages to the reader through her text. While explaining the importance of a secret meeting, she also went on about the meaning of a secret saying, “A secret meant nothing; it was like gossip: just a bit of unpleasant knowledge about someone who happened to be someone other than yourself” (pg 9). This is an effective use of dramatic irony because the definition Packer provides for “gossip” is the basis of the entire story. The black Girl Scout troop creates the lie that one of the white Girl Scouts used the racial slur “nigger” and this drives the rest of
Literary Analysis: “Barbie Doll” Today’s women hold themselves to unreachable and unreasonable standards of beauty. With media and social networking on the rise, the standard of beauty is skewed to what others portray it to be. Girls and women of all ages and diversity have self-esteem issues due to the “beauty myth”. Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, defines it as an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of ‘the flawless beauty’.” In Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll”, the deadly effects of the beauty myth are revealed. It all begins with a young girl being born into the world of judgment.
Andre Guy Mr.Zumer-W131 16 March 2015 Comparative Critique Paper Comparative Critique of Personal is Political: A Feminist Defense of Cinderella and Cinderella and Princess Culture Shoshanna R. Schechter is also a strong feminist who in turn doesn’t believe the princess culture is bad for girls but is a stage that they go through. Peggy Orenstein is a feminist who believes little girls that believe in the princess culture and enjoy dressing up and pretending to be princesses are falling into gender stereotypes at a very young age. Orenstein, in her article seems to go through a journey, in which, she comes to this conclusion. Both Schechter and Orenstein are well known feminist who share almost exact opposite views on the princess culture idea and how it affects young women and children. Although Schechter and Orenstein seem to share these similar feministic views on princess culture, it may seem to be that Schechter carries a more liberal, open minded view on princess culture and Orenstein has a more radical closed minded view on princess culture.
This statement represents the American definition of beauty that has evolved throughout the world and history; this idea that whiteness symbolizes beauty and blackness denotes ugliness. The idea of a woman having long, straight hair, light-skin dehumanizes Black women because society has created the idle “Barbie” in which every woman should represent in the American society. This is one of the main reasons Black women find alternative ways to beautify themselves, as a way to show that they are equally as beautiful as a bi-racial or white
So why are females so bombarded with pressure to live up to what society says a woman should be like? For a very long time in American history, women were told that they should be feminine. They were told that there place in life was to be at home and raise a family and to look pretty for their husbands. Little girls were given Barbie dolls and games called Mystery Date and Miss Popularity (Peril). All of these things helped conform little girls into thinking that their role in life was to be something pretty for a man to look at.
“Popular culture can sometimes quicken this silent transformation, because the atmosphere it creates and racist messages are so prevalent that they are difficult to ignore. Therefore, African- Americans are especially vulnerable to the messages conveyed by popular culture that white beauty will inevitably dominate people’s life.” She idolizes Shirley Temple unlike Claudia who despises Shirley. “Younger than both Frieda and Pecola, I had not yet arrived at the turning point in the development of my psyche which allowed me to love her. What I felt at the time was unsullied hatred” (Morrison pg.19). Claudia is too young to understand what is about Shirley that makes her beautiful and Claudia not.