Reconstruction of Female Identity Through Unattainable Beauty Standards in Zadie Smith's White Teeth

Abstract

Reconstruction of female identity is one of the important issues in modern times. The majority of the females who descent from the countries of the third world confront lots of problems because of their race and gender. Black females or colored skin females because of the oppression of the white society upon them, try hard to cope with society in order to get some relief and feel that they are part of this cruel white society. One of the solutions for these black females is to reconstruct their identity by mimicry to the English beauty standards. Zadie Smith is a postcolonial author. She deals with third- world women and how they are treated in a minority and in a racist way. She strives to empower the subaltern black females who have African roots. In addition, to change the universal stereotypical dominated image about them. Smith focuses in her novel White Teeth on the marginalized female and how she is treated as shadow in her society. This article shows the impact of beauty standards on the reconstruction of female identity.