Beauty in the Bluest Eye

What does it mean to be beautiful? In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, to be beautiful you have to be white. Black girls and women are considered ugly simply to further implement the racism that existed in Lorain, Ohio in 1941. The label of black women as being ugly is another tool that was used to suppress the black community. Adult women, having learned to hate the blackness of their own bodies, take this hatred out on their children, who in turn also express the same hatred on other black girls. Those who have certain characteristics that were considered more “white” (“are quotes) are held in a higher status than others are. Many characters in the story face the label of being ugly.
No one more than the main charac...