Ending the Cycle of Body Dysmorphia
All societies have different beauty standards. In America, the people who are considered to be more beautiful are those who tend to have a lighter skin tone, blonde hair, and blue eyes. It’s not uncommon to see people worrying about their body image, or their features, because most people are raised in a society where looks are a top priority. However, there is a difference between worrying about one’s health and obsessing about one’s body image to the point of becoming hysterical. These symptoms of hysteria usually develop when a person grows up in a home where they are surrounded by people who pay too much attention on how their bodies look, or people who are not shown love and believe that if they change the way they look they will be loved. In both “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Eight Bites” by Maria Machado, readers can perceive how Pecola and the unnamed narrator are plagued by the desire to change their bodies so that they can be accepted by society, but begin to realize that changing their bodies did not bring them happiness and develop hysterical symptoms.
Due to the fact that Pecola was raised in a society where her features were not considered as beautiful, she was fixated on getting blue eyes. In the story, after Pecola’s mother and father had a big fight, Pecola admitted her desires for blue eyes because she believed that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). This shows how Pecola equated blue eyes with being beautiful. In respect to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic concepts, Pecola’s id is where this desire for blue eyes comes from. The id is where a person’s primal desires originate from. When talking about the id Frued says “the quantitative factor, which is intimately linked to the pleasure principle, dominates all its processes,” Pecola is seeking blue eyes because she believes that it will bring her love and acceptance. She noticed at school that teachers, and her classmates despised her. Teachers never looked at her, she was forced to sit by herself in class, and wasn’t picked to speak unless everyone was required to speak. In an experiment conducted by two psychologists, Mamie and Kenneth Clark, we can see how many children of darker skin color, considered their skin color to be ugly. The children were shown a white, and black doll, and were prompted to choose which one that looks nice, most of the children chose the white doll. When they were asked to choose the one that looks bad, most of them chose the black doll (176). This shows the way that darker skin color was considered as ugly around the 1940’s. Pecola knew she was considered to be ugly by everyone, but she didn’t exactly understand why.
Furthermore, by observing how Mr. Yacobowski, the owner of the deli, treats Pecola, we can see why she longed for blue eyes and beauty. While Pecola went shopping at the deli for Mary Jane’s, a type of candy, she encountered Mr. Yacobowski. The narrator describes the way Mr. Yacobowski fails to look at her because he doesn’t feel as if she’s important enough to look at. She says that while she was looking at his eyes she noticed a “total absence of human recognition-the glazed separateness… she has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness” (Morrison 49). After her encounter with Mr. Yacowbski, Pecola’s demeanour changed completely and she felt shameful. She displaced her anger about the way she was regarded by Mr. Yacowbski to the weeds she once called beautiful. Instead of actually saying something to Mr. Yacowbski because she’s not able to, she called the weeds ugly. Then she ate the candies, the candies whose wrappers have a picture of Mary Jane “blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes… to eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane,” this event just adds to her desire for blue eyes. She knows that society perceives her as ugly because she didn’t have the features that everyone considered to be beautiful like Mary Jane. This is similar to what happened to the narrator in “Eight Bites.”
Growing up in a home where her mom only ate eight bites of food to keep herself in
shape, the narrator in “Eight Bites” was forced to put a lot of attention on her weight. In this story there’s a clear struggle about body image that starts with the identification process, “the assimilation of one ego to another” (Freud 5). Research from the University of Torino shows that parents, peers, and media are the environmental stressors that affect a person’s view on body image. The paper mentions that the media is responsible “for the spread of the thin ideal in western societies,” but parents’ dieting behavior and body image dissatisfaction would contribute to a child’s unhealthy habits and negative beliefs about their bodies (Amianto et. .al 2). If a parent doesn’t let their child know that they can be accepted by society, even if the media is telling them something else, it makes the child want to change their body.
Adding on to the fact that by getting the surgery, the narrator continues the cycle of body dysmorphia in the family. When the narrator told her daughter about the surgery, the daughter was disappointed and promptly asked her mother if she hates her body, and continues with “You hated yours, clearly, but mine looks just like yours used too” (Machado). This question asked by Cal, shows that she’s negatively affected by how her mother treats her own body. Moreover, when the narrator dies in the end, she apologized to the figure that roamed her home after her surgery because she realized that she altered her appearance to fit into a society that wouldn’t accept her. The paper mentioned earlier from the University of Torino, states that the “prevention of body disturbances must pass through the education of the parents, encouraging warm and supportive relationships with the offspring that can buffer media influences and contribute to healthy and positive beliefs about the self and the body,” however the narrator’s renunciation of her own body didn’t fester a positive image about Cal’s body.
Both Pecola and the narrator in “Eight Bites” were so convinced that the way they looked was not beautiful that they went about changing their appearances. By the end of “The Bluest Eye,” Pecola was convinced that she had blue eyes, when in reality she still had the same eyes. She used the blue eyes to displace her feelings about the real problem which was her skin color, and the fact that she wasn’t accepted or loved by society because of it. Similarly, the narrator in “Eight bites, went through her surgery just to realize that in the end she wasn’t happy about the fact that she changed her body. Their actions show how strongly society’s influence can be over individuals who are not reassured by their families that they are loved and accepted no matter how they look. As proven by the narrator’s actions in “Eight Bites” her choice to get the surgery in order to be accepted by society, will continue the cycle of body dysmorphia within her family. The figure living in her home was condensed to represent the fact that she didn’t want to get the surgery in the first place, but also that the cycle of people changing their bodies to fit society’s standards would continue.
Sources Cited:
Amianto, Federico, et al. “Body Image Development Within the Family: Attachment Dynamics and Parental Attitudes in Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies.” 2017, www.Imedpub.com.
Clark, Kenneth, and Mamie Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” 1947.
Freud, Sigmund. “Lecture XXXI The Dissection of the Psychical Personality.”
Machado, Carmen Maria. “Eight Bites.” Gulf Coast Magazine, http://texas.gulfcoastmag.org/journal/29.2-summer/fall-2017/eight-bites/.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Vintage Books, 2016.
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