The Bluest I

I grew up in a household where beauty was measured by the lightness of your skin, the pinkness of your lips, and the texture and length of your hair, while the walls and books were full of images of women who scored lowest on these scales.  At a young age I realized that beauty was truly unattainable for my sister and me. What we saw when we looked in the mirror did not matter because we found that these standards lived beyond the walls of our home.

When I read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, I was inspired to create a body of work based off of quotes from the novel that resonated with me. A body of work that showed the damaging effects of standardized beauty but also allowed other Black women to connect and reflect upon this shared experience of examining oneself in the mirror and wishing for European features.