After
watching the trailer for Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, I realized the
crazy things we go through for a better appearance. (For example, in the movie,
people use relaxer for their hair, something that isn’t healthy by any means.) You
don’t like your nose? Get a nose job. You don’t like your hair? Get it dyed, cut,
wear a wig, etc. You don’t like your skin tone? Get a tan. No matter what
generation it is, there is always something that people want to change about
themselves. In order to keep up appearances, something about ourselves is
always changing. Be it our clothes, our hair, our makeup, our body shape, etc.
This
idea of changing ourselves reverts back to The Bluest Eye, when Pecola
wishes that her eyes were blue. The wish for these blue eyes were something
that Pecola thought could help make her beautiful, that with these eyes nobody
could do wrong in front of her. “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe
Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they’d say, “Why, look
at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.””
(pg. 46). She hoped for blue eyes because they were known as something Shirley
Temple had: white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes.
The
focus on this facial feature symbolizes that eyes are the window to the soul.
Looking into someone’s eyes can tell a lot about that person in that particular
moment. For example, if a person is lying or what emotion they’re feeling. The
eyes hold vulnerability, weakness, innocence; all characteristics that describe
Pecola and that have helped formed the girl (woman) that she is. She wishes for
blue eyes because they might have helped prevent her father, Cholly, raping
her, or they might have helped make her mother take care of her and acknowledge
when she’s hurt instead of pushing her away (the blueberry pie scene).
Pecola wants blue eyes, something
she could achieve with contacts if she were living here in our day and age. However,
this want for something else doesn’t just end with eyes, even though it does
for Pecola. This brings back the documentary, Good Hair. In this documentary,
Chris Rock explores why African American women go through what they do in order
to have better looking hair, hair that isn’t ‘nappy’. One example is ‘weave’
from the hair of women in India, where they ask for lengths of 10-14 inches. ‘Weave’
or relaxer (see first paragraph) is used in the attempts to have a better
appearance, something which is used to be taken more seriously amongst society.
In the comments for the trailer on
Youtube, a girl of 12 years old wrote that she never felt more beautiful than
when she cut off all her hair and stopped trying to change it to cater to
others’ wants. This feeling of wanting to appear beautiful is only looks deep
and prevents a person from really being themselves. Blue eyes wouldn’t have
solved Pecola’s problems; they just would’ve made her look different.
We are so consumed with appearance in our culture today. There are many options and encouragements through media and other means that tell us there is something wrong with us, and that there are many ways to change. We are obsessed with the idea that beauty and happiness go hand in hand. We also obsess over what the idea of beauty is. Pecola is a great example of how we wish something different, and feel that if it were, we would be happier and the world would be better.
ReplyDeleteI think one reason why Toni Morrison chose eye color as for Pecola's preoccupation was because that at the time the book was published there was no conceivable way for a person’s eye color to be altered. Contact lenses were in their early developmental stage in the 60s and 70s. They were expensive at this time and few people had them. It would be almost inconceivable that a destitute black family like the Breedloves would be able to afford them. Moreover, colored contacts weren’t invented until 1981. (http://goarticles.com/article/Why-Were-Colored-Contacts-Invented/5428969/).
ReplyDeleteI have seen Chris Rocks Good Hair documentary, and it is my recollection that hair relaxer products have been around for a long time. http://www.ehow.com/facts_5549342_hair-relaxer.html These products might have been available to the black community Pecola was a part of. This is the same with skin lightening products. (http://www.skin-whitening-product.com/bleaching-skin.html)
The fact that Pecola cannot change what her eyes look like is a metaphor for Pecola’s inability to change herself, her soul, her personality, her fate, her family, her background, etc. I agree completely with your statement that the eyes are a window into a person’s soul. I think eyes tell a lot about a person. And the fact that Pecola cannot change her eyes no matter how desperately she wants to could be associated to her a deep desire to change her current life circumstances.