In Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, by Bell Hooks (1996), we are treated to the childhood experiences of a southern black girl through her own eyes. In Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy (1994), we are treated to one young girlÆs struggles to overcome the debilitating facial disfigurement of surviving cancer of the jaw. In both of these stories, the authors provide us with an account of the horrors of living in a society where the mainstream norms of physical beauty are used to define identity. However, we are also treated to stories of hope in the way that each author deals with the deleterious impact of norms and attitudes about the body and identity. In Bone Black, the narrator is not miserable only because she is a black girl in a white world. In Autobiography, Lucy is not miserable only because part of her face is disfigured. In both stories, the narrators suffer from shame and feelings of low self-esteem because of how their respective ôphysical differencesö make them appear as less desirable to others.
In American society, the female body is often manipulated by patriarchal attitudes and valuations. Men often objectify the female body, relegating it to images that are designed solely for the pleasure of males. In such imagery, little identity or character is posited in females whose perfect and sexually alluring bodies help satisfy male fantasy and desire. In this sense, the female body is often portrayed and appears as less desirable when it does not meet with social norms and images primarily perpetuated by men. When color or disfigurement is added to body image, desirability is eroded even further. As an African American girl, the narrator in Bone Black believes she is somehow less desirable than white girls because white girls and their bodies are held up as the desirable norm. Because African Americans often have no ôdesirableö identity compared to ôwhiteö bodies and physicality in a prejudice...