When I lived in Japan, Japanese women seemed to find this stereotype rather amusing and said basically that a “traditional” Japanese woman isn’t going to want anything to do with a Western man and that any man looking for a traditional Asian wife in Japan was in for a surprise because the sort of Japanese woman who’s interested in Western men is “modern” and “very strong”. Again and again I heard that the main thing that made Western men seem appealing to (some) Japanese women was that Western men actually helped out around the house on occasion.
Even a traditional Japanese wife might surprise a Western husband in that she’d expect to have control of the family finances even if her husband is the sole breadwinner.
On the subway in, of all places, Munich, I saw a black guy wearing a hot pink and black striped suit. He looked awesome, but I don’t think many white guys would even attempt such a look.
I saw an opening band once with a white singer who was playing 80s-influenced pop rock, and he was wearing a purple suit. I have to admit he seemed* a lot more black, and caused me to think of the music he played as more black, than I would have thought had he not been rocking the purple.
*I didn’t say “looked” because he had pasty-white skin. And played a mix of dance and rock music with 80s stylings: yes, he did open with a cover of David Bowie, why do you ask?
When I lived in St. Louis in the late 1970s, I lived in the narrow band across the middle that was racially integrated (a couple blocks from Laclede Ave.), and dated a black girl from the North of St. Louis, and I constantly noted how black women were the only people you could ever see wearing purple. And they wore it a lot. I loved them for it because otherwise the nation was in a serious purple drought. The rest of us learned from their example. As for the reasons for this tendency, my hypothesis was that a rich shade of purple looks excellent alongside a dark complexion. On the other hand, my GF is peaches-and-cream white, and she’s the only one I know who wears purple outfits more than olive-Mediterranean me, and she seriously rocks it like no one else.
Who is that old cat? The only Don Cherry I know was a trumpeter, of mixed black and Cherokee ancestry, who was so proud of his Cherokee grandmother he wrote a song about her.
Also that if it had been stereotyped black—which I never heard tell of, I only observed street fashions in St. Louis for a few years and never once saw purple on anyone except black women—or if it was distinctively connected with black style in some way, it would be something good to wear to express black pride. Toward the end of the 1970s, the Afro hairstyle was disappearing. (The northern St. Louis girl I dated had a short Afro and told me of her wish to keep it short because she felt that growing her hair long encouraged her to “become wild” and she was serious about her life.) But there was purple, thank Goddess.
White guys like woman-on-top and black guys like doggystyle. That’s what my boyfriend said. (I almost replied that I know lots of black guys who like the woman on top but then I thought better of it.)
Don Cherry, former coach of the Maple Leafs, long time hockey commentator, and founder of a chain of sports bars. Famous for his loud suits, loud mouth, and not so loud dog.
The only Don Cherry I know was a trumpeter, of mixed black and Cherokee ancestry, who was so proud of his Cherokee grandmother he wrote a song about her.