Beauty in "Jazz"


page 201
[Joe's] old. Really old. Fifty. But he met her standards of good looking, I'll say that for him. Dorcas should have been prettier than she was. She just missed. She had all the ingredients of pretty too. Long hair, wavy, half good, half bad. Light skinned. Never used skin bleach. But it missed somehow. If you looked at each thing, you would admire that thing -- the hair, the color, the shape. All together it didn't fit.
Questions:
1) In another part of the novel it says that Joe likes her bad skin. Is it because this is a sign of how young Dorcas is (seventeen) or is there another reason? Does he think it will keep the young boys away from her so he can have her to himself that much longer?

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