Examining African American Girlhood in Toni Morrison's the Bluest

Skin Color Politics and the Beauty Standard: Examining African American Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and God Help the Child (2015) By Kalliopi Fragkouli A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and the Department of American Literature, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki December 2017 1 To all the girls struggling with self-acceptance 2 Acknowledgments The writing of this thesis would not have been possible without the help, support and patience of my supervisor, Dr. Domna Pastourmatzi, to whom I am deeply grateful. I would like to thank her for understanding my need to explore new academic fields and for letting me work on a subject I was passionate about. I would also like to thank her for our conversations and meetings, which were always a source of inspiration and helped me gain a deeper insight of the material I was dealing with. Additionally, I have to thank Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou for acting as my mentor and guide from the beginning of this academic journey. She was the only person that could fully understand the emotional and mental struggles I faced during my postgraduate studies. I am forever thankful for her support, trust and good intentions. Finally, I am grateful to my parents for respecting my choices and for standing by my side in all my endeavors. I feel blessed to know that I can count on them for every decision I make, and every step I wish to take in my academic career. 3 Abstract In my thesis I attempt to shed light on the stigmatization of African American women by white American beauty standards. Toni Morrison’s novels, The Bluest Eye (1970) and God Help the Child (2015), provide an insight into the African American girls and women’s daily struggles with regards to their external appearance. I focus on race and gender in order to showcase in what ways the black female psyche is traumatized and inevitably is plagued by self-loathing and self-depreciation. In both novels, Morrison shows that dark-skinned black women are marginalized and devalued by white Americans as well as by members of the African American community because they are unable to meet the ideal image of female beauty, which requires light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Despite the social factors that perpetuate and impose these standards on the black female mindset, Morrison seems to project a more optimistic view in her latest novel regarding the hope for change in American society and the prospect of a better future for African American women. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………...................................................3 INTRODUCTION………………….……………………………………………………………..6 CHAPTER ONE: Standardized Beauty, Desired, Yet Unattainable.....................................................................16 I. White American Standards of Beauty and the African American Community……...24 II. ‘Mama’: Morrison’s Black Maternal Figures and their Adoption of Beauty Standards……………………………………………………………………………..28 CHAPTER TWO: From Girlhood to Womanhood: Self-Perception, Femininity, and the Social Stigma of Ugliness……………..…………………………………….………..............................................33 I. Have Things Changed? Morrison’s Restrained Optimism about the Future………...44 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………..50 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………………52 5 INTRODUCTION A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye It can be argued that African American beauty has been at the center of attention from the emergence of the “Black is beautiful” movement, and continues to be a hot topic of discussion even in contemporary American society. The image of dark-skinned black women and the changes it has undergone is an issue worthy of examination. Living in a social environment, which is dominated by white standards of beauty and influenced by stereotypes of race and gender, African American women frequently find themselves under the microscope. Toni Morrison is one major American black writer who has fictionally represented the impact of the beauty myth on black females. In her novels Morrison focuses on the great influence of the white beauty standards, of the American beauty and fashion industry, and of Hollywood films on black people. The author analyzes the psychological oppression dark-skinned African American women and young girls experience. Trying to live up to the ideal image of femininity, many black women enter a vicious circle; they struggle to imitate the ideal but find it impossible, because by nature they have different bodily features that cannot be easily changed. Failing to meet the requirements of the ideal femininity, black women eventually lapse into self-loathing. In The Bluest Eye (1970), Morrison examines the damaging beauty standard of the blue-eyed, 6 blonde-haired, white-skinned American girl of the 1930s (embodied by the movie star Shirley Temple) and its impact on the mental wellbeing of some young black girls. Particularly, Morrison tells the story of Pecola (the protagonist), a twelve-year-old dark-skinned girl, and shows that she falls into madness due to the pressures of her racist social environment. In God Help the Child (2015), Morrison emphasizes the exploitation of black beauty, which becomes a profitable commodity for the cosmetics business and the fashion industry. Aiming to fit in the ideal image of exotic dark-skinned femininity, Lula Ann (the protagonist) gets carried away by the stereotypical representation of the luscious, curvy, and sensual black woman of the 1990s. She relies on her external appearance and on her dark skin in order to be accepted as a respected member of the beauty industry. Interestingly, both novels highlight the pervasive influence of the deep-rooted western beauty standards on the African American community in general and on black mothers and on vulnerable young black girls in particular. While growing up in the dominant white culture, black-skinned girls are affected not only by the opinion of the whites but also by the opinion and attitude of their own mothers. In order to fully decipher Morrison’s representations of African American girls and women, and the way they are shown to react to America’s beauty standards, it is necessary to shed light upon the persistent segregation African Americans confront in contemporary American society. Many African American women still face discrimination, which shows that the factors of race and gender continue to have an impact on their lives. As Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton state the “isolation of black Americans was achieved by a conjunction of racist attitudes, private behaviors, and institutional practices,” which created an underclass in the black community, and “exacerbated black poverty” (83). Also, until recently, black and white Americans were separated in all spheres of social interaction, and received completely different 7 treatment in terms of housing, education, job opportunities, and medical care. We realize that racial segregation and the inferior social position of the underprivileged African Americans have a long history in USA and partly derive from white racism and economic disadvantages. In her novels Morrison depicts black female experience within a white-dominated environment and highlights the ways in which the identity of African American girls is affected by the mainstream cultural standards. As Cynthia Davis mentions all of “Morrison’s characters exist in a world defined by its blackness and by the surrounding white society that both violates it and denies it” (7). The destructive effects of racial oppression in Morrison’s fiction underline the hardships that African Americans have to deal with. Aware of the recurring pattern of discrimination, Morrison claims that “[t]he Look of white society […] not only freezes the black individual but also classifies all blacks as alike” (10). Her African American characters, who have difficulty identifying themselves as members of the black community or have adopted white cultural values, are vulnerable individuals struggling with self-definition. To be more specific, America’s urban underclass is evident in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) in which Morrison exposes “this self-reinforcing cycle of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” (Massey and Denton 83). Chronologically the story spans from the 1930s to the post-Depression 1940s. The fact that “the Great Depression of the 1930s ravaged the black communities of the north” (Massey and Denton 116) is perfectly demonstrated through the Breedloves’ deprived life. In Morrison’s novel, the Breedloves are portrayed as an impoverished, unhappy, and alienated African American family. Living in an abandoned store instead of a home, the Breedlove family lacks the love, tenderness, and tranquility that usually define a familial environment. 8 Morrison’s God Help the Child (2015) takes place in contemporary America (from the 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century) and examines whether the black female condition has improved. Aside from the fact that “skin color remains a powerful basis of stratification in the United States” (Massey and Denton 85), Morrison demonstrates that gender can accentuate pervasive discrimination when it is burdened with the sexist images of white supremacy. According to Robyn Wiegman,

Load more