diane+arbus

Diane Arbus's "Identical Twins" makes me think of __The Bluest Eye__ a lot. The similarity of the two girls reminds me how, in a lot of the book, the young girl, Pecola, just wants to be like everyone else - almost an identical version of the white girls she sees in movies. Going along with this, the women who try and get rid of the "funk" really wanted to be just alike, prototypes of what they thought was perfect. These two girls look like they were trying to dress as perfectly as possible, but we can see that one of them, at least, isn't really happy about having her unique-ness taken away.

"Ice Cream Dessert I" by Andy Warhol represents a thing of privilege in __The Bluest Eye__. When Claudia, Frieda, Pecola, and Maureen are walking home from school, Maureen stops at the ice cream store, but only buys ice cream for Pecola. Claudia, in particular, is craving ice cream, but she knows she doesn't have the money. As she watches the others eat, ice cream becomes a kind of obsession for her. However, in the end, she doesn't get her ice cream, and has to settle for something else. The ice cream represents the unattainable in the girls' lives to me, and it really annoys Claudia that she can't get it when others can.

Both of these pictures represent American ideals of consumerism and beauty. While the two girls in "Identical Twins" are not exactly the image that Morrison talks about, of blond hair and blue eyes, they represent the movement of our culture trying to push people towards one idea of beauty, almost taking away people's individualism. The other ideal of consumerism in American culture is something we see in Claudia's obsession for that ice cream cone. The unattainable is always something that we want, and while ice cream seems like a trivial thing, it was really a big deal to Claudia. These two ideals are certainly present in American culture, and have deep rooted meaning for the individuals in our nation.

Next Wall Last Wall