Gee, how did you know ahead of time that pic #6 would be my favorite?!
(May be a bit NSFW, unless you work at Playboy, Inc. or somesuch!)
- “Jack”
Probably because she’s dead now.
Aaliyah died in a plane crash in the Bahamas in 2001. Very sad…she had pretty much everything going for her at that point.
She also probably didn’t look as hot in Queen of the Damned because she was…well, the queen of the damned.
I’m curious– if women of certain ethnicities are more attractive than others, and most non-white men would date a white woman if they could, does that mean the ones who don’t are simply taking one for the team? That non-white societies simply suffered in silence and convinced themselves they were attractive for the sake of procreation until some colonialists showed them what pretty really was?
(And when is this heading to IMHO?)
Well all the tribal mutilations are a turn off, but she’s quite beautiful IMO.
I think she’s kind of plain.
I don`t know about that. Just to offer a contrary opinion, I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in a community that was about 95% white. Moreover, the women were mostly northern European white, predominantly German decent. Lots of blondes, but even brunettes are very fair skinned.
I am naturally attracted to literally anything other than what I grew up with. Without personality getting in the way, I find myself more attracted to black, hispanic, or asian women than white women. I rarely meet middle eastern or Indian women but I like them too. Even among white women I prefer Mediterranean looks to the fairer skined look I grew up with.
I don`t know why my experience is so different from yours - but I certainly am not drawn to what I was exposed to early in life.
Of course, I shoud say that I still find many many white women very attractive and most people I’ve dated have been white because they’re more prevalent in my life.
I don’t think it is this at all.
I think it is more cultural prohibitions. Men like to get laid, in general, are while may have preferences tend to be more flexible in choosing partners. Or put another way are more likely to roam further afield than women are.
The interracial couples I have known (in particular black/white) have told me they get MUCH more grief from the minority community than they do from the white community. Black men may be happy to date a white woman but are likely to get pissy seeing a white man with a black woman. White men, I suspect, are less likely to fuss seeing a black man with a white woman for fear of being labeled a racist. Black women, I have been told, will get down right mean towards a white woman with a black man.
Anecdotal I admit but these are the stories I have heard from such couples and they all agree in the broad strokes.
I’ve noticed a trend in advertising…for the most part, they shy away from the California Girl standard of the 60s and 70s and seem to have embraced “different” as the standard of beauty today. They use (women, mostly) of all races with all kinds of hair, skin tone, features, sizes. They seem to find the beauty in every type of woman today. I, for one, find it refreshing not only to see models with varying features on TV and in magazines, but that the buying public can actually see themselves, in all their imperfect glory, in the clothing, cosmetics, or what have you.
Different strokes for different folks. Some people find the exotic attractive. Or if not exotic at least out of the ordinary.
It is for this reason I tend to prefer brunettes or black or red haired women to blonds. Blonds are a dime a dozen. A beautiful red head is unique and special (to me).
That is not to say I do not find blonds beautiful…I certainly do. Just as a preference I like something a bit less ordinary.
Of course some people may find comfort in the familiar and not want out-of-the-ordinary. No right or wrong to it. Just whatever you like which is fine.
Alek Wek is stunning without white features.
It’s not so much the color of the skin as the shape or symmetry of the facial features, body shape and distribution, etc, that I think is effected by one’s early life on what is or isn’t attractive.
I could of course be completely wrong…I’m just guessing here.
Well, I wasn’t exposed to blondes so much when I was young either, yet I married one. I think that one’s early experience has an impact on perceptions of attractiveness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you will automatically be drawn only to what you grew up around. Were that the case there would never been any interracial marriages. The exotic also has a very strong appeal of course. I think though that even the exotic that men are drawn too have to conform to some degree to some ideal of structure and symmetry that is set based on your early environment. So, while a man from, say, Ireland (just to use an example) might be drawn to some Asian women for instance, they might not be drawn to other all Asian type women. Maybe for some reason a given man is drawn to flat featured Asians but finds other kinds unattractive…or vice versa. Likes Polynesian women but not Inuit. Or maybe he finds some African types attractive but others not so much.
Or it could just be random I suppose…men like what they like and it really has nothing much to do with our early environment.
-XT
Several of the white men in this thread have said basically the same thing – that while some black women are beautiful, they are not personally attracted to these women. I take this to mean that it isn’t some flaw in black women’s looks that’s the issue, but rather that a lot of white men are for some non-looks related reason not interested in black women.
I’ve mentioned before that one of my best friends in college was a biracial girl (black mom and white dad, as it happens) with an ambiguous “exotic” appearance. People assumed she was pretty much any ethnicity other than black or white – Latina, Filipina, Arabian, South Asian, Native American, etc. This girl was really good looking and got hit on by guys of all races all the time, but she told me she’d learned the hard way to make it clear up front that she was black. A fair number of non-black guys would suddenly lose interest once they knew. So it wasn’t her looks that these guys found unattractive, it was the fact that she was the “wrong” race.
Simple racism is one possible reason for this sort of thing, although I think for most men it’s TOO simple. Fear of outside disapproval is perhaps more common; this same friend told me she had also been out with white guys who went to some trouble to avoid having her meet their parents or friends. She called this the “wait in the car” treatment, as in “I’ve got to run in and get something from my mom…why don’t you just wait in the car?”
Another reason is that many people don’t seek relationships or even casual sexual partners outside their own race. This doesn’t necessarily mean they think people of other races aren’t good enough, just that they don’t meet a lot of people of other races or believe on some level that people of other races are culturally different enough that they are unlikely to be compatible.
A related reason might be that a lot of black women are not interested in dating white men. Several other posters have already pointed this out as a possible explanation for the relatively low number of white man/black woman interracial couples. So a white man may not think of a black woman, no matter how beautiful, as a potential partner due an expectation of rejection.
That said, I have several black or biracial friends who are involved with white guys. The friend I’ve been talking about is currently engaged to a white man. I have another biracial friend who’s married to a white man, and know two other black women married to white men. Most of my friends are white, but I don’t know any white women my own age who are involved with black men, only older (40+) couples.
In My Fucking Bite-My-Ass and Bugger Off Opinion, then?
We’ve gone this far and nobody has mentioned the HUGE role that economics and status play into what we consider “beautiful.”
Basically, rich people are beautiful. 100 years ago, lily white skin and a plump body was “beautiful”. Why? Because it meant you weren’t a poor hungry farmer. Now skinny and suntanned people are “beautiful”. Why? Because it means you aren’t sitting in an office all day and have time to work out and sunbathe. All of our indicators of feminine beauty (high heels, long hair, long nails, make up, skirts, etc.) are things that require time and money to maintain and make you less functional in some way or another. Just like bound feet or force-fed Mauritanian girls, it is another way of showing off status.
In much of the world, white people have higher status. So having a white woman on your arm is a good way to show off your status.
Anyway, I’m a somewhat attractive blond woman. Not a knockout, but not bad looking. In Africa I was considered the most beautiful thing to walk the earth and got marriage proposals daily. In China the men don’t even look twice. Why? I think it is almost certainly because white people do not have a particularly high status here.
Does this drivel really belong in Great Debates?
I have to admit that few of the women linked to so far have really rung my bell. I do, however, find Michelle Obama gorgeous, if not exactly sexy. (I suspect that has more to do with age than anything else.) That was a terrible picture of her though. I also remember seeing some beautiful and sexy black women in DC. One I recall in particular was from Africa, but I don’t remember what country. An African accent can be very sexy in a woman. Another was partly Asian, which gave her very unique and attractive features. There’s also a particular African-American doper I have a longstanding crush on since seeing her picture, though I doubt she knows it. (I think our only interaction in a thread was my telling her how much I liked the picture, though I always enjoy reading her posts.)
I’d have to say that on average, I am more likely to be attracted to a random white or Asian woman than a random black woman, but some black women are extraordinarily attractive.
True, that.
Hmmm…I followed your links, and almost all of these women (with one exception : Lauryn Hill) look white. Particularly striking for the two first ones. So, what you’re saying by picking these examples is that “black women” who look like white women are as attractive as white women.
In fact, I completely agree with your opinion on both women.
It seems natural to me to notice that a woman can be objectively beautiful, but not attractive to me. And actually, I’m often not that enthralled by many of the “gorgeous hot babes” whose pictures are occasionally linked to in IMHO, even though I acknowledge they’re are beautiful.
And regarding more specifically black women (who tend, in France, to be actual Africans, rather than mullatos like in the USA), I find them on average more beautiful but less attractive than white women. It would be interesting to try to figure out someday exactly what features make them less attractive to me.
Thinking about it, the typical African “flat” nose certainly plays a part. I also generally prefer thinner lips (which apparently is rather uncommon, since plenty of women have lip jobs to become more attractive), which are probably less common in black women. Also, the “blacker” the better for me when it comes to black women. Weirdly enough, a black woman will become less attractive to me for having a paler skin, while the exact same skin tone I’ll find perfect in, say, a middle eastern woman.
It seems (not that I had put much thought into it until today) that there are features I find more attractive across the board, while for other features, I find them a plus for some types and a minus for others. I’ll have to investigate this issue more closely. If I get slapped on the face for ogling on black women in the days to come it will be entirely your fault.