This article has been inspired by Toni Morrison’s under-rated classic “The Bluest Eye.”  The novel tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a pubescent black girl living in pre war America, whose only wish is to have blue eyes.  Throughout the book she is described as being “ugly.”  It is this ugliness that leads many of her peers and even adults to dislike her.

Why am I telling you about this book?  Because this book made me think about how Morrison’s narrative is perhaps more relevant now than it was when she first wrote it.  Like Pecola, we are constantly bombarded with images of the perfect looking man or the perfect looking woman.  We are forever being told that in order to attain particular things in life then we must conform to a set ideal of beauty.  The problem is that very few of us probably do conform.

Growing up I was often teased about my plain appearence, as I’m sure that many people are.  Whilst I would never claim to be completely consumed by self conciousness-I have to admit that I do get a little worried when I have to attend large gatherings, particularly if it is one where I am expected to dress up.  Like Pecola, I often wanted to look different.  Unlike Pecola, my self loathing was never anything to do with my racial identity.  I have never been made to feel ashamed of my “whiteness” or my “Britishness.”  I have never had people turn their noses up at me for being British, European or whatever.  I have always been small and plain.  Never a hit with the gentlemen.  But that is nothing to do with racial identity.  Or is it?

I suppose one of the defining features of Western culture is the importance that we place upon appearence.  I recently completed an assignment on teenage magazines and the way in which they promote negative self image in their readers.  Even I, as critical of women’s magazines as I am, did not expect to come by some of the findings that I did.  According to figures I have obtained from the BBC website, 50% of schoolgirls say that they are on a diet.  Add to that the overwhelming number of women, man and yes, even young people, going under the knife and you begin to get some sort of picture of just how obsessive we are becoming. 

Of course, we must all have our own part to play in this.  Foucault, for example, argues that as an audience we enter into a two way interaction with any text.  That is, we do not merely just passively consume these images; we form some sort of relationship with them.  We take our own perceptions, experiences, thoughts and feelings to any text that we read-and we do read images.  When I read “The Bluest Eye,” for example, I took that journey with Pecola but I did so taking along my own adolescent experiences, my joys and my insecurities.  Of course I also read it critically, as a feminist and as an English graduate.  However, I still read it as a person, as a woman who wasn’t quite happy with her own appearence. 

I felt particularly drawn to Pecola because she was real to me.  She was by no means pretty or rich or even educated.  There was nothing distinctive about her other than her ugliness.  Her ugliness was her otherness.  But for me it was also part of my attraction to Pecola because I felt that Pecola was me.  Racial differences nonwithstanding.  Class and religious differences apart.  We are both women.  Women who, despite our own better judgement, want to look better because prettiness is often equated with what is good and pure.  Pecola to me is more real than all of the Blanche Ingrams and Catherine Earnshaws of this world.  I suppose you could say that there is a little Pecola in all of us.