In a time when Shirley Temple, with her blue eyes and pale skin, is idolized by both whites and blacks, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove seeks desperately beauty for its own sake. To achieve beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows the disastrous effects that colorism and racism can have on an entire culture and how African Americans will tear each other apart to fit into the graces of white society. The desire to be considered beautiful in the white world is so irresistible that the characters in The Bluest Eye hate the color of their skin and feel ashamed of their culture. These feelings of contempt and self-loathing are passed down from adults to their children, creating a continuous cycle of negativity and self-hatred. “Here was an ugly little black girl who was asking for beauty… A little black girl who wanted to come out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes” (Morrison, 174). By demanding white beauty, Pecola Breedlove is desperately trying to pull herself out of the abyss of darkness. Because Pecola has dark skin and authentic African American features, black and white society has conditioned her to believe that Pecola's physical characteristics make her a victim of classical racism; it is the idea that “the physical ugliness of blackness is a sign of a deeper ugliness and depravity” (Taylor, 16). This notion allows for the mistreatment of dark-skinned people because their blackness is a link to a “past dark” and with uncivilized ways. Pecola does not embody the beauty standards of white society because she does not have light skin and characteristic blue eyes; therefore she must be ugly and ba...... middle of paper......Melus: 19.4 (1994): 109-127. Academic research completed. EBSCO.Web. March 24, 2014.Lobodziec, Agnieszka. “Theological Patterns of Black Middle-Class Performance in ToniMorrison’s Novels.” Black Theology: An International Journal 8.1 (2010): 32-52. Academic research completed. EBSCO. Network. March 24, 2014. McKittrick, Katherine. “Black and “Because I'm Black, I'm Blue: Crosscutting Racial Geographies in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.” Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of FeministGeography 7.2 (2000): 125. Academic research completed. EBSCO. Network. March 24 2014.Morrison, Toni. Bluest Eye. New York: Penguin, 1970. Print.Taylor, Paul C. “Malcom.s Conk and Danto.s Colors; or Four Logical Petitions Concerning Race, Beauty, and Aesthetics Aesthetics & Art Criticism 57.1 (2000): 16-20. Academic research completed. March 23 2014.