Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes. In America, these are a woman's ideals of beauty. This image is ingrained in our minds throughout life in the media and conditions people's standards of beauty. We see black women wishing their skin was lighter. In an episode of "The Tyra Banks Show," a black girl just 6 years old explains that she doesn't like her hair and wants it to be long and straight like a white woman's. Some minorities have surgery to change their facial features or only date white men. Having been taught to think that white people are more attractive than people of their own ethnicity. In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Pecola illustrates the inferiority felt throughout the black community due to the ideology that white qualities propel you into social status. Pecola's mother, Pauline Breedlove, said it best when she was introduced to beauty, because they are the most destructive ideas in human history. Hence envy, insecurity and disillusionment were derived from ideas of beauty and physical appearance. Pecola's story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy. We should not consider beauty as a value but rather as an oppressive discourse that has taken over our society. Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue, she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Her friends would play with her, her teachers would treat her better, and even her parents could stop their constant arguments because, deep down, no one would want to "do bad things in front of those pretty eyes." Pecola has deep admiration. for Shirley Temple and therefore thinks she is ugly because she looks nothing like Shirley. Everywhere in society... middle of paper ...... contains seeds it will not nourish, certain fruits it will not bear, and when the earth kills of its own accord, we acquiesce and let's say the victim had no right to live. » When society fails to nourish flowers like Pecola, when the nourishment of the soul is denied, the fruit of self-love is never realized and turns into self-hatred, which leads to doom. unwanted by Pecola. She is driven to madness and eventually to the trash on the outskirts of town. Works Cited Saphir. 1996. Push. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. Showalter, E. 1989. “The Feminine Tradition.” The critical tradition: classic texts and contemporary trends. Ed. David H. Richter. New York: St. Martin's.http://203.131.210.88/lartswiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=li.pdfhttp://www-personal.ksu.edu/~lswilli/socwomenblack.htmlhttp:// antiintellect.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-pecola-breedlove-in-me/