Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye Beauty is dangerous, especially when you lack it. In the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison we witness the effects that beauty brings with it. Particularly Pecola Breedlove's breakdown, due to her belief that she doesn't possess beauty. The media in the 1940s as today imposes standards by which beauty is measured; but in reality beauty lives within all of us, whether it is visible or not, there is beauty in everything; that beauty is unworthy if society labels you ugly. In the 1940s and today, the media has pushed an image of perfection and beauty into society. This image is many times false, but the naive cannot be deceived and it can become an icon of beauty. If you don't fit the picture then you're ugly. In the book “The Bluest Eye” we witness the power the media has over specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The beauty icon at that time was Shirley Temple, a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. It is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, “…I had felt a strange thing, more frightening than hatred for all the Shirley Temples in the world” (19). Claudia is connecting the hatred she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she feels towards beautiful girls like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to convey this image and says: "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, signs on the windows - the whole world agreed that a blue-eyed, haired doll yellow and pink-skinned was what every little girl valued” (20). This idea is repeated repeatedly throughout the story, the idea that blue eyes are beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy once she goes to buy some candy called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blonde girl with blue eyes in the package. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels that Mary Jane's eyes are beautiful and that by eating the candy she feels the love she has for the girl on the package and finds herself closer to her (50). The idea spread by the media that blue eyes are beautiful fuels a strong destructive desire in Pecola.