I was recently watching that “weird” tribe in Africa where it is customary for it’s female members to increasingly stretch out a hole in their lips inorder to insert a large clay plate. Extremely unattractive to me, (as theory has it that just may have been the point, to ward off European slave traders). But it got me thinking, I wonder what they and other cultures from around the world think about our cultures female members practices of growing and painting their finger and toe nails, painting their lips and waxing their eyebrows. Not quite as extreme but, none the less could be considered quite “weird".
What other cultures “female” members practice these rituals? Is it common to have Aqua blue toenails in Columbia?
I’m not even going to mention silicone breast implants. That’s another post all together!
Well, there are those horrible cramped wedge-shaped shoes that they cram their feet into and klunk klunk klunk around in…
Seeing my wife plucking her eyebrows freaks me out. I never really realized how much plucking the average woman does. It seems that there isn’t anything natural hair wise on most women. That and not very many I know actually wear their natural hair color. It’s either highlighted or dyed a completely different color.
You’ve already mentioned it, but I have seen women who have these long, lonnng fingernails. Real or fake, they are weird. They scare me, as all talons do. Such fingernails broadcast the message “I’m single, and subscribe to Cosmo magazine.”
Sorry for the stereotype.
Re: the long fingernails.
It’s okay if it’s a costume kind of thing. Maybe she’s Goth, or we’re at a film festival, or an after-hours party. Then it’s cool and sexy. Otherwise, it’s like “how do you take out the garbage with those spikes on yer fingers?”
Hey! My hair is completely natural dark brown with some gray peeking through! Not everyone colors!
But beyond that, I think about this all the time when I’m shaving my pits and legs. I don’t think the beautification habits of American females differ that much from any other woman in modern society (well, Western society anyway), though I’m told the pit thing is pretty American.
Down south you have the really great customs like absolutely no white shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day, hats on Derby Day and pantyhose after the first college football game of the year. For a fun look at them see A Southern Belle Primer: Or Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma by Maryln Schwartz.
The reason is – she was seen walking with a lit cigarette in Houston! Gasp!
Nose jobs. Not only weird, but painful.
Shaving body hair–not universal to all Western industrial countries. I can speak from experience that a woman who has never shaved is not bristly and unpleasant. Instead, her never-shorn limbs are covered in soft down, very nice in winter.
Unfortunately, once shaving is started, it looks like the damage is done…
Collagen injection in lips…that’s REALLY weird.
I live in Columbia, and I don’t recall ever seeing aqua blue toenails on females. Most of the women that I know outside my immediate family wear shoes most of the time when I see them, so maybe I’m missing something. But I think you mean Colombia. There I couldn’t say. I think middle class women in Latin America do wear more makeup than middle class women I meet on a daily basis here in Columbia, MO
My vote for the yuckiest such custom : Botox
Eew! Botox!
Holy guacamole! I can’t believe there is such a book! I AM a Kappa Kappa Gamma! But not a southern belle.
WRT the OP: American media is so ubiquitous that I doubt Amercian female beauty practices are seen as weird by most anybody. I suppose there must be some people out there who haven’t been exposed to the American/Western ideal of beauty…surely there must be an article somewhere chronicling the reactions of such a person upon viewing plucked, shaved, implanted, botoxed, dyed, blow-dried, made-up, pantyhosed, and girdled American women for the first time.
Yeah, in not many cultures do women pay someone else to take fat out of their butt and inject it into their lips and/or cheeks.
Scented douches.
I’d never heard of them before this board. I still don’t get it. My cooter isn’t supposed to smell like lavendar. It’s supposed to smell like clean healthy cooter.
The Nacerima tribe is notable for its great emphasis upon denying and concealing all natural bodity traits and functions.
Ah, Dogface! One of my favorite research projects! An amazing culture.
I remember one Doper 'fessing up to shaving her arms. It would never have occurred to me that somebody might do that. Is it common in the US?
Ellen Cherry said:
My sterling is Rose Point! 
American media are so ubiquitous.