Beauty Through Attitude

Creativity and randomness is a way to describe my future posts. Apparently the week before AP exams , teachers like to add a little "surprise" to their mix of assignments. In my AP Music Teachers case, it is giving more pointless homework that will only lower my grade in the class rather than help in the exam. In Spanish, it is cramming all the short stories that might be on the test into a few lessons. The only class that sort of adds a little dynamic to this mix is this one. Even though these assignments on the blog are long and I am just angry that AP exams are not being taken into account, this assignment is a surprise I don't mind (much).

In The Bluest Eye, black is ugly. All the reader ever hears about Pecola Breedlove is that she is ugly. Which just makes you think, what is ugly and was she really ugly? The standards of beauty have not changed much since the times of Pecola and now. Except now the color of someones skin doesn't really affect how we see their beauty. At least not here in my country, which is different from the context of the novel.

Beauty in the novel is the blonde hair, blue eyes, ideal of perfection sold to every woman and girl at the time, whether white or black. Either of these physical assets or what they connote in society is what makes beauty. Yet, in the novel we have seen characters that are supposed to be beautiful because their skin is lighter or their eyes are lighter, and they happen to be the nastiest of characters. So it becomes a whole idea of what Morrision actually defines as beauty and what she makes into the hidden true beauty.

Morrision puts Pecola in harsh conditions and challenges her, to prove that her true beauty is her thrive. As cheesy as it sounds, what makes Pecola beautiful is her personality. Not only her but Claudia and Freida as well. Pecola is shown as frail because that is what discrimination has done, but the thing that makes Pecola a strong character is her ability to withstand so much and not lose her innocence about it.

This song...

is called Black Is Beautiful by The Trinikas. They describe a black woman and the beauty of being beaitiful because you are black.

The song constantly repeats the idea that "black is beautiful" as well that "determination you have to have it". I believe Pecola is a personification of this song. She is not known for being beutiful because of the standards of blonde blue eyed magic. This song doesn't praise that but rather the strong determined attitude of being black. That is what really makes the person beautiful. Some people are quiet about it like Pecola but it does not mean it is not there.