Beauty Judged

Queen Nefertiti

Beauty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and yet there are common qualities that consistently make it to magazine covers, Hollywood screens, and win beauty pageants.

Ugly

There are famous experiments of asking children which doll is ugly and which is beautiful – even though both dolls are equal in everything but color.

I have also witnessed, first hand, adults, teens and children passing judgement on beauty based solely on color or race. I know this because when I ask them to explain what is ugly about the person, they are at a loss for words.

Flawless

A word which helps to avoid bias, infatuation and fetish.

Here are human features that most people go crazy for.

Yuna modeling her dress from November Culture

Body

• Symmetrical
• Width: Not under-nourished / not over-nourished
• Stature: Not too tall and lanky / not too short. Some women wear flats to add cuteness, others wear high heels to add sexy. Women usually prefer taller mates, they say for protection, but may also be for the vanity of how they appear together.
• Shape: Some like narrow (slender) people. Others like wider (stocky) people. Medium (athletic) build seems to have the most universal appeal.

Yuna

Face

• Symmetrical
• Narrow face people like round face people. 
• Round face people like narrow face people.
• Heart shape face has universal appeal.
• Nose: people like a cute nose. People get very picky about a nose. They often like it triangular but with rounded edges. Not too pointy (devil like), not too long (witch like), not too narrow, not too wide, not turned down (hooked), not turned up (piggy).
• Lips: People go crazy for full lips. Women get injections to make their lips fuller. Full lips are called kissable lips. Light skin women with full lips are complemented on their full lips. Black people are often not complemented on their full lips (double standards and racism at work), instead racist caricatures have been drawn of their lips to exaggerate their fullness (double standards and racism). 

Angela Davis

Hair

• orderly
• Many people adore curly hair. People who have it often call it ‘unmanageable’ – see Tall & Curly.
• Many people love thick straight hair. However, people who have it often call it boring, or even ‘straw like’ and force it to get curly with curling irons or perms. Falling down hair grows out of the scalp and immediately falls toward earth. The falling down hair likes to be tossed and it likes to fly in the wind.
• Many people admire tall hair. African hair can grow the tallest. Tall African hair was popular in the 60’s and 70’s in the U.S. during the Black is Beautiful and Black Power movements. See Angela Davis. Some people who have tall hair often want to have straight hair that falls down and they often straighten it with products to make it fall down; sometimes they use weave synthetic hair or natural hair (often Asian hair) into their hair so that the hair falls down.

Skin color

• Dark skin people seem to prefer golden brown or light skin on others. In some Black skin countries, albino flesh is eaten. To prevent this, albinos are segregated into their own schools. One theory says that albinos migrated from Africa because they were shunned for their skin that would burn, blister and catch cancer.
• Golden Brown skin people often prefer lighter, or darker skin on others. Golden people often avoid the sun in order to avoid skin blemishes, age spots and sometimes, to not become darker.
• Light skin people are often ok with having light skin until it burns, freckles, or gets cancer. Light skin people have a preference for people with golden brown to dark skin – though they will often not admit it due to the potential for xenophobic or racist opinions. Many women prefer to have light skin because they conflate it with feminine.

Eye color

• Two tone eyes – rare and captivating. National Geographic loves peoplewithtwo tone eyes
  • Green with amber
  • Amber with dark grey – Jordan Spencer
• In-between colors – rare and striking
  • Green Grey Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
• Green – rare, about 2% of world’s population
  • Dark green
  • Medium green
  • Light green
• Hazel – 5-8% of world’s population green with brown flecks
  • Rihanna’s eye color
• Amber – 5% of world’s population
  • Medium Amber
  • Light Amber
• Brown – 55% of world’s population. Brown eyed people are seen as trustworthy and smart. They are loved by people with colored eyes.
  • Dark brown
  • Medium brown
• Grey tones – mysterious
  • Grey Green Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
  • Grey Blue Brad Pitt (often considered light blue)
• Blue – 8% of world’s population. Loved by brown eyed people, but often looked on with suspicion due to both Malcom X’s talk of blue-eyed devils, and Hitler’s propaganda about a blue-eyed,blond haired Aryan master race.
  • Dark blue Frank Sinatra
  • Light blue Brad Pitt (often considered grey)

Claudia Lynx

Eye shape

• Size
  • Bigger is usually considered more attractive.
  • Larger eyes are perceived as youthful.
• Shape
  • Almond shape seems to be the most admired. Persian.
  • Round looks cute on children but as adults not so much
  • Epicanthic fold eyes often receive the cosmetic surgery to add the double eyelid feature found in non-Asian eyes
• Depth
  • Surface – Asian, African
  • Medium depth – Middle Eastern, Persian
  • Sunken – Caucasian
• Tilt
  • Level – African, Middle Eastern, Persian
  • Tilt up at outer edges – Asian
  • Tilt up at inner edges – English
• Spacing
  • Narrow set
  • Middle set
  • Wide set

Extra Medium

If a person is extra medium they will likely fit into the roles and expectations of most, and they will likely be attractive to the most people.

Extra medium is when you are right in the middle between all extremes.

But if everyone was extra medium, life would be extra boring.

Extra Medium

Also see

• Types of Albinism
• Four mixed-races within each race

Miss Universe: Gabriella Isle

See on Scoop.it – Mixed American Life

On November 9, 2013, Gabriela Isler made history when she was named Miss Universe, becoming the seventh woman from Venezuela to bring home the crown.

See on www.missuniverse.com

9 Things You Didn’t Know About Miss USA Nia Sanchez

See on Scoop.it – Mixed American Life

Nia Sanchez, 24, was crowned the most beautiful woman in the United States on Sunday night, but this is one beauty queen who packs a punch — and a kick.

 

3) She’s Hispanic.

The newly crowned Miss USA is “half Hispanic,” according to her profile. In fact, Nia said that she made it a point to travel to Mexico on mission trips when she was growing up. The 24-year-old model is one of the few Latinas to have won the crown in the history of Miss USA, Mexican-born actress Laura Herring was the first in 1985.

See on www.huffingtonpost.com

When Black Hair Is Against the Rules

Military restrictions on African-American styles are discriminatory.

See on www.nytimes.com

Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants: Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain

“With a low rate of immigration and a high rate of interracial marriage, Japanese Americans today compose the Asian ethnic group with the largest proportion of mixed-race members.”

See on www.amazon.com

Debrahlee Lorenzana – Puerto Rican / Italian

Debbie Lorenzana—whose mother is Puerto Rican and father is Italian—came to New York from Puerto Rico 12 years ago.”

“I’ve seen men turn into complete idiots around her. But it’s not her fault that they act this way…”

Community Village‘s insight:

Interesting problem to have. Good looks that are distracting, turn people into bumbling idiots, and cause you to get fired.

– -Glenn Robinson

See on www.villagevoice.com

Cultural Appropriation Explained, and What We Can Do About It

Cultural appropriation is a complicated yet socially significant concept that powerfully affects and reflects the way people from different cultural identities connect with each other.

It is pervasive in my personal experiences. It’s when a non-Asian boy can wear a rice paddy hat for multi-cultural week and be perceived as trendy for it, whereas if I’d gone to school wearing the same thing I’d be perceived as backwards and be harassed for being a FOB. I saw it one Halloween when hordes of white girls wore headdresses and feathers in their hair and paint on their faces as part of their “Indian costumes.” I see it in the Facebook pictures of the tattoos my peers pay for of religious symbols from other cultures because they look exotic and they can relate to them “spiritually.”

Singer Lana Del Rey’s music video for “Ride” featured Native American aesthetics, such as her headdress seen here, taken out of cultural context. When cultural appropriation is modeled in popular media, imitation runs rampant. 

Those guilty of cultural appropriation can find it easy to feel personally offended there might be something wrong with “appreciating” a culture outside their own and cry for “freedom of expression.” This is understandable in a country as diverse as ours and because of the innate fluid nature of culture change itself. However, cultural appropriation and the looking down thereof stems from a history that has not always been so accepting or welcoming of different cultures.

What does it mean, exactly?

Cultural appropriation is the process of one culture taking parts from another culture. Specifically, it usually is a dominant culture taking symbols or practices from another culture without fully understanding them or using them in ways they were not initially intended.

Why does it happen? What causes it?

It is simply the consequence of centuries of the assimilation and exploitation that stems from white colonialism and imperialism. The newcomers establish their home country’s culture as the norm and adopt any of the conquered kind’s and people’s artifacts, symbols, rituals, and other practices as they see fit. White privilege today, within the realm of cultural appropriation, is the continuing belief that whites are free to barge into other cultures at their whim and taking what they like while disregarding context, history, and any else of the less flattering parts of what it means to be a part of the latter culture. It’s a power play.

Aren’t people of color appropriating white culture all the time?

It is impossible to culturally appropriate “white culture.”

This is because of, again, the idea of white privilege as a consequence of a violent history. Where white is the majority, white is the norm. My mother would not be able to walk into work wearing traditional Vietnamese ao dai without looking unprofessional and out-of-place by Western standards. My aunts advise me to use skin lightening methods because though their respective husbands each found something attractive in their sun-kissed faces, they know that I must conform to a Western ideal of beauty in order to be socially accepted and socially mobile in this culture. I cut my hair a certain way, listen to certain music, talk a certain way so I don’t have to deal with being called a FOB or be asked if I can speak English. I personally am torn between my parents’ culture and the one here I was physically born into. Assimilating to survive is not a choice and could hardly be considered offensive. Assimilating to the white norm is practical, but cultural appropriation is entertainment.

L’oreal advertisement for Rosy Fairness skin whitening cream that touts “fair” skin as the ideal to aspire to over the less desirable “yellowish complexion.” Products such as these perpetuate the notion of white superiority in beauty standards and reinforce assimilation to these types of ideals.

What are the consequences of cultural appropriation, then?

Cultural appropriation involves the picking and choosing of specific aspects of the culture in question, aspects that are exotic and appealing. This appropriation creates a caricature of the culture and even propagates racist stereotypes.

Cultural appropriation commodifies, cheapens, and sometimes even sexualizes, and thereby dehumanizes other cultures and their respective people. It takes what is prized and precious from other cultures and mutates them into whitewashed products completely out of cultural context. It ignores and erases history, and it ignores and erases culture.

Selena Gomez’s performance during the MTV Movie Awards show in 2013 caused an uproar amongst the leaders of the Universal Society of Hinduism because of the way she used the symbol of the bindi on her forehead as a fashion accessory and failed to recognize its religious significance.

What can we do about cultural appropriation?

The mixing of cultures is inevitable and it is natural for people to take an interest in others’ backgrounds. What is needed is cultural exchange, or the idea of approaching learning about other cultures from a stance of humility and respect. Time to understand another culture and an awareness of the boundaries a guest has in approaching another culture are essential in fostering a healthy exchange of sharing and appreciation.

The condemnation of cultural appropriation isn’t cause for over-analyzing , tip-toeing around anything that might seem remotely out of one’s own cultural sphere, or policing others’ actions. Rather, it is an opportunity to become acquainted with the diversity and most importantly being mindful of how the way we carry ourselves can be representative of identities larger than us.

 

Why It’s Hard To Talk About Attraction In Race And Culture

Many of us have racial or cultural preferences in who we date; that makes many of us uncomfortable.

See on www.opb.org

▶ “Dark Girls”–A Look At Colorism and Internalized Racism In The Black Community!!(Full Documentary) – YouTube

Dark Girls is a 2012 documentary film by American filmmakers Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry. It documents colorism based on skin tone among African American…

See on www.youtube.com

Mixed-race faces appeal more: study | Otago Daily Times Online News

People of mixed-race are more attractive, unless those judging are thinking about what racial group the person belongs to, University of Otago research shows.

“People preferred blended faces because they more closely fitted a person’s general idea of what a face should look like based on the ”population of faces” they had been exposed to.

”When you think of multiracial individuals as examples of humans they are more appealing because they better capture your overall experience of life.”

But when people were thinking of the blended faces as examples of racial groups their ambiguity ”pulls down their appeal” because they were difficult to categorise.”
See on www.odt.co.nz