Perhaps the most destructive of ideals have been the concepts of physical beauty; particularly in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, when the white baby doll is given to Claudia and the overwhelming idealization of Shirley Temple. It is only when these ideas of physical appearance are characterized under set presumptions, as seen in Morrison's novel, that it is through the beliefs of the characters of Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove that whiteness was most closely associated with beauty and cleanliness. As a result, this separation of the nature of the races, for means of characterization, is narrow-minded, that is to say that it favors existing bias and preconceptions of beauty. So, once there is a predetermined standard of beauty, such notions may swell up in envy, insecurity, and self-hate, such as with the young, impressionable black girl, Pecola, as illustrated in this quote in Morrison's novel; "Jealously we understood and thought natural – a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us," (Morrison 74).
             By wishing for blue eyes rather than lighter skin, Pecola desired to see things differently as much as she wishes to be seen differently. She could only receive this wish, in effect, by blinding herself: "...A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror of the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of her fulfillment..." (Morrison 204). Once the illusion of her blue eyes is exercised and put into effect, Pecola was then able to see herself as beautiful, but only at the cost of her ability to see accurately both herself and the world around her. The connection between how one is seen and what one sees has a uniquely tragic consequence for her.
             Morrison's, The Bluest Eye, and another liter...