Free Bluest Eye Essays - Learning to Hate :: Bluest Eye Essays

The Bluest middle  - Learning to Hate     Many Americans today ar not satisfied with their sensible appearance. They do not feel that they be as beautiful as the women on television or in magazines. The media is brainwashing American females that if they are not slim and get ash-blonde hair and blue eyes, they are not beautiful. This causes women not only to scorn the ideal females, but also hate themselves. In Toni Morrisons fresh The Bluest Eye two of her main characters, Claudia and Pecola show hatred toward others, and themselves because they are not as beautiful as the supreme females.   Claudias hatred starts at the beginning of the novel when she and her sister are staring at Rosemary Villanucci. Rosemary has what Claudia and Frieda take. They want the things that white people have. We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the congratulate of ownership that curl s her chewing mouth.(Morrison, p.9) Claudia and Frieda hate Rosemary because she has all of the things that Claudia and Frieda will never have or be, particularly Rosemarys white skin. This forces a feeling of self-hatred for being black upon the girls.   You can see Claudias hatred again when she receives a white baby doll for Christmas. Instead of adoring and cradling the new gift, as most other children would have done, she mutilated and destroyed the doll. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, windowpane sign - all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what all(prenominal) girl child treasured. Here, they said, this is beautiful, and if you are on this day worthy you may have it. (Morrison p. 20-21) She hated the dolls blonde hair and blue eyes staring back down at her, reminding her of how different she looked from the doll. She knew that she was wrong for destroying the doll, but she could not refrain herse lf from doing it. The doll, symbolized the unblemished girl, and she knew she was very far from looking like her. In Emily Pragers essay Our Barbies, Ourselves, she reveals the negatively charged effect of a doll that establishes such an impossible standard of physical perfection for little girls.