But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives" (Morrison)
then there'll be a little love left over for me." Critic Biman Basu, writing in College Literature (Basu, 1996), notes that that the paragraph above represents the language genius of Morrison, as the passage presents "a bizarre coupling of crime and punishment, of criminals and the custodians of culture, or of law and lawlessness
, what most people would term the "real" body. She (Bordo) believes that the "real" body should be the focus of modern feminist theory and politics
, what most people would term the "real" body. She (Bordo) believes that the "real" body should be the focus of modern feminist theory and politics
, what most people would term the "real" body. She (Bordo) believes that the "real" body should be the focus of modern feminist theory and politics
And Nel, meantime got hurt, while Sula "was ill prepared for the possessiveness of the one person she felt close to" (Sula 119). On this very subject, black sexuality (the myths and the reality) and the values that emerge from the environments in which people are raised, author Patricia Hill Collins in her book Black Feminist thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, writes that there is a "mythical norm" (Collins, 165) that while "financially independent, white middle-class families" are built around a "monogamous heterosexual couple," the African-American family are "stigmatized" as "deviant people
It is a sense that bonding builds better women, and always there is the sensuality within the building of that bond (and isn't sensuality a pivotal ace in the hands of women who want to be feminine and also impervious to shallow, temporary pain?). From girlhood," Sula shows a natural gift for daring, Lorie Watkins Fulton writes in African-American Review (Fulton, 2006)
But she was woman enough to "postpone her anger for two years until she had both the time and the energy for it." And 18 months later, "with two crutches, a new black pocketbook, and one leg" (Morrison 35), Eva returns
No doubt Morrison is acutely aware of the history of feminine struggles - and all the distasteful oppressive offerings of the past and present are likely reflected in some form through her characters and themes. During WWII women's magazines emphasized that although "the war could not be won by lipstick" (Wolf) the bloodshed and raging fury in Europe and the Pacific did symbolize one of the reasons America was fighting, and that was for "the precious right of women to be feminine and lovely
Because of the history of racialist inflections in aesthetic discourse and the Manichean differentiation between white and nonwhite women, the so-called woman of color's relationship to beauty does not merely replicate the white woman's relationship to beauty, even if one were to understand beauty as a discourse of abjection for all women. Cheng contends that the effects produced by the intersection of race, gender, and aesthetics are not merely additive, but rather interlocking and, at times, even contradictory (Cheng, 192)
Chin contrasts a case study of Mattel's Shani dolls with an ethnographic look at race and commodities among New haven kids, Chin's paper locates children's consumption within the context of social inequality; a context examined in few studies or consumption. Chin concludes that taking kids as primary ethnographic subjects suggests ways in which this largely silenced group can speak to larger social and theoretical issues, among them race, class, gender, and age (Chin, 305-321)
Her study found that adolescent women of Ecuador are able to consume media images and maintain a healthy distance and the ability to critically examine implicit messages. De Casanova concludes that if this pattern continues, the young women may be able to keep from developing the low self-esteem and eating disorders common among white North American adolescent girls (De Casanova, 305)
Pecola believes that having blue eyes will bring love and acceptance into her fragmented and barren existence. For Pecola, "Blue eyes epitomize everything desirable in white American culture & #8230; Pecola's longing for this cosmetic change expresses her deeper need to reform the world by reforming the way she sees it" (Fick, 11)
She posits that in order for Black children to assimilate into the dominant culture, historically, their cultural values have been minimized. "This process of cultural assimilation or alienation has had a devastating effect on Black children's opportunities around the globe, particularly as it relates to the loss of their identity and to the underutilization of their human potential & #8230; A group's loss of identity occurs through a process of cultural alienation and annihilation and through a culture of exclusion" (Freeman, 51)
B. Du Bois, Holt notes that "both passages have as their theme the fundamental duality of black life in America, the paradox of being so intimately a part of the national culture and yet so starkly apart from it" (Holt, 302)
Hunter suggests an explanation, that, it happens in part because racial ideologies devalue the phenotypes of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans and associates their features with ignorance and ugliness. Hunter concludes that European colonization and slavery have left a lasting imprint on African-American and Mexican-American women: skin color hierarchies that continue to privilege light skin over dark skin (Hunter, 175-193)
Jones found that nevertheless, certain ideals, especially for women had become widely diffused worldwide, including a lack of body odor, white natural teeth, slim figures, paler skins and rounder eyes. Corporate strategies helped bring about a reduction in the range of global variation in beauty ideals at the same time that they developed products which enabled more and more consumers to aspire to capturing the beauty premium (Jones, 125-154)
Pecola, on the other hand, does not have joy and love to balance the pain and ugliness of her everyday experiences. Pecola's family is without the resources she needs, and without which she retreats into madness (Klotman, 123-125)
These values tend to be rigidly tied to gender and are race-specific to the extent that racial and ethnic differences are not allowed to be represented. Kuenz further asserts that for anyone not represented therein, and especially for African-Americans, interaction with mass culture frequently requires abdication of self or the ability to see oneself in eth body of another (Kuenz, 421-431)
Their research clearly showed that the Asian-American women in both studies were schooled by popular culture to objectify themselves, their bodies and their cultures. They report that the young women experienced a pernicious internalization of dominant ideas of Americanization (Lee and Vaught, 457-466)