Plenty of American women fantasize about foreign guys. The Italian guy who’ll serenade you, the French guy who will woo you in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the endearingly blushing, stammering Brit (or the Irish/Scottish/Welsh rugger who’ll throw you over his shoulder). Does it work the other way, though? What would a non-American woman fantasize about? A cowboy? A biker? And how do Asian women feel about the American guys who pursue them?
I’ve seen a lot of Korean girls with an American guy fetish. I think they fantasize about a tall, handsome, affectionate blond guy who cooks and cleans for them and will one day whisk them away to the US and hand them a green card.
As a non-US woman with a US American husband, I think I can talk about this!
I’m trying to think of the idealised stereotype for US American men (the same way that French men are “sophisticated” and Italian men are “passionate”, etc).
It’s very superficial and earnest, like Captain America or Superman. Unnaturally white and straight teeth, possibly unnatural tan, very picture-perfect and superficially flawless. From the Midwest, on the football team and in the choir, helps little old ladies across the street and gets cross at people who don’t recycle.
When I was a teenager, the US American celebrities I had crushes on were Brad Pitt, Matthew Broderick, George Clooney and Will Smith. Very clean and fresh-faced and unthreatening. Clooney was a bit dangerous but in a totally unthreatening-to-anyone-who-actually-knew-him way (like when he played the bank robber who was in love with Jennifer Lopez).
The competing stereotype of US American masculinity is of course the thoughtless yahoo cowboy who owns several handguns and runs around whooping and may or may not shoot someone in anger over a parking space for their Range Rover. I think that one is more prevalent but it’s not very attractive – the Superman stereotype is the only one I can think of that’s both well-known and appealing.
You might as well ask “how do humans feel about what kind of discipline should be used in raising children?”
As an American female who has lived in Asia (Indonesia, to be precise) for 12 of the last 17 years, I assure you, there are as many answers to that question are there are single Asian women who have ever dated/thought about dating an American man.
For one thing, it’s not fair to lump all “Asian” women together - a Japanese woman is not the same as a Thai woman is not the same as an Indonesian woman is not the same as a Filipina.
Moreover, not all (for example) Indonesian women are alike. I’ve known calculating Indonesian women who cared for nothing but how much money they could extract from their date. I’ve known Indonesian women who cared for nothing but whether the man they were dating was a decent guy who would treat them with respect.
Not fantasize, really, and nobody gave a shit about whether they were American, Canadian or from Papua-New Guinea, but when I was growing up (1980s Spain), “foreign tourists traveling woman-less” were generally viewed as an object of… well, not quite lust, more like you could use them to practice sexual stuff you wouldn’t want to be learning on a man you really cared about (in case you turned out to be real bad at it, or it hurt, or you finally didn’t want to go on). The Spanish girls got the no-strings-attached practice, the dudes got the no-strings-attached sex (which might involve relatively “out there” stuff), both parties were happy. Those same girls would have made a local guy jump through enough loops to count as an Olympic sport.
A lot of those guys were American, but like I say, it wasn’t really a requisite.
In Costa Rica lots of women dream of a foreign sugar daddy, but again, it’s not about nationality: it’s about the sugar.
Well, okay, but it’s really the guys I’m generalizing about. So let me rephrase it: How common IRL is the stereotype of the American geek with an Asian-girl fetish, who goes to Japan or Thailand or Indonesia, blatantly on the make? I mean, I’m picturing Asian women cringing at the mere sight of a white guy with an anime character on his shirt – “Here comes another gaijin; I’m gonna pretend I don’t speak English and hope he’s not fluent in Japanese.” Or are there not that many such men, and not as obnoxious?
SecondJudith, I can see that. BTW, how was the Thanksgiving dinner?
I’ve just updated the Thanksgiving thread, Rilchiam, thanks for reminding me!
I was thinking of the earnest self-righteous slightly hypocritical kind, who gets indignant about things Everyone Knows Are Important like recycling, wearing seatbelts at all times, who coughs pointedly at smokers, etc, but doesn’t care about social activism much outside that. I would contrast that with the “fuck you I’ll dump my plastic bags in the ocean if I want to” cowboy type.
ETA, I think anyone who has someone come to their country to pick up people who look like them, but don’t actually care about who they are and what they are like, is going to be creeped out.
As an American married to a Brazilian woman, I can tell you that Brazilian women fantasize about marrying a RICH American man. The reasons are simple:
-Life in Brazil is pretty hard-wages are low, and the good jobs go to people with familial connections
-Brazilian men are very macho-and usually have several mistresses
-A Green card and American citizenship is a way out of spinsterhood and poverty
-American men are appreciated (for their willingness to help cook and take care of the kids-something that Brazilian men are not expected to do).
-Good stuff (nice clothes, electronics, PCs, etc.) cost a lot in Brazil-these women see marrying an American as a step up for them.
Of course, if you are rich in Brazil, none of this applies.
I was just thinking about something similar last night but with accents. I am an American and I find all sorts of accents to be very sexy. Australian in particular. And Irish. And …well I could go on and on. Is it at ALL common for people from other countries to find an American type accent sexy?
Perhaps ironically, people who get all upset about recycling are at least as likely to own a huge gas guzzling SUV as anyone else. They even slap their pro-enviomental stickers on to the back of the suckers. :rolleyes:
Canadian guy here - many, many years ago I had a Californian GF - we met working on an archaeological dig in Israel, and it ended after that summer when I went back to Toronto and she went back to California.
Before that, I thought a Californian accent really annoying, particularly on women, associated with “valley girl-speak”. When I met her, though, I discovered that a Californian accent was super-sexy … now, when I hear a woman speaking with a Californian-type accent, I associate it with sexiness in my mind.
The amusing thing for both of us was that each assumed that they didn’t really have an accent at all …
If there is any US accent I think is considered sexy it’s an old-fashioned Ashley Wilkes style “Southern drawl”. I think we hear too many US accents in films and TV for it to register as other and therefore go “ooh, that’s sexy”. It’s the accent of toothpaste commercials and paint-by-numbers studio action films.
I find the stereotypical Midwest newsreader accent and the West coast accent to be a bit too flat and nasal to be attractive. Specific urban accents like a Brooklyn or a Chicago one are fun, but I wouldn’t call them sexy.
I dunno what their fantasies are, but when some friends and I traveled around Latin America (all white American males ages 19-23 at the time) we got a lot of positive attention from the girls.
It’s strange. I can’t really speak about attraction to men specifically, but there’s definitely a love/hate relationship to US culture. People crave it, and yet they resent it.
When I was in Helsinki, I was startled to see a classic Ford Mustang, all restored, parked in front of the railway station. I was more surprised to see a full-size tin-bin American van, the Econoline or Dodge Ram type, there as well. Apparently there’s a sub-culture of European collectors. There’s the craving.
The resentment comes when people feel that the flood of US culture is too great, there’s no room for their own stories and ways of looking at the world. (As a Canadian, I know about that…)
But attraction? I’m Canadian, with a very similar accent and appearance to many Americans. It never made a difference to my attractiveness or lack thereof in Europe.
I was thinking of the earnest self-righteous slightly hypocritical kind, who gets indignant about things Everyone Knows Are Important like recycling, wearing seatbelts at all times, who coughs pointedly at smokers, etc, but doesn’t care about social activism much outside that. I would contrast that with the “fuck you I’ll dump my plastic bags in the ocean if I want to” cowboy type.