pos;s conception of that standard. In "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Hurston examines the black-female response to the white beauty ideal, but in a markedly different manner. Hurston gives her central character, Janie all of the attributes of the white-female standard of beauty. Janie's features conform to the black version of the white ideal, including those that Neal and Wilson claims is the most important: light skin and long hair (325-26). Janie enjoys possessing those features, but at the same time she refuses to let her light skin and long hair to separate her from the Eatonville community. A great portion of the novel concerns Janie's struggle against the community's attempts to place her because of her features, particularly her hair, on a social level that is above and apart from the community.
             The person in the community who is concerned with blocking Janie from the community's full acceptance is her second husband, Joe Starks. He is quite determined to force her to see her difference. He insists on separating her from the Eatonville townspeople by keeping her in a "high ruling chair (Their Eyes 54). Hurston privileges hair as the battleground of Janie. The fist thing Janie does when Starks die is let down her hair.
             One of the most powerful scenes was when Janie confronts Starks when he is on his dying bed. "Listen, Jody, you ain't de Jody ah run off down de road wid. You'se whut's left after he died...You done lived wid me for twenty years and you don't half know me atall. And you could have but you was so busy worshippin' de works of yo' own hands, and cuffin' folks around in their minds till you didn't see uh whole heap uh things yuh could have" (132-33). When she tells him that he didn't know her "atall" she is referring to the way he blocked her repeated attempts to become a part of the community. It is also a possibi...