Ok, here is my definitive answer. I know you’ve all been waiting…
Someone you can easily imagine having sex with, who has a substantially different ethnic or racial appearance than you.
That’s pretty much it Boyo.
I first learned really about the term from my Psych Classes, so whenever I hear the term exotic this is what I think about.
Well, duh. Hey, he’s a hot dude.
Me neither. Again, I can’t speak for the aggrieved, but if I understand correctly, the problem is not with the speaker’s conscious intent but with how it feels to be depersonalized that way. Similarly, I’m pretty sure most sexual harrassment isn’t actually intended to make the recipient feel unworthy–quite the opposite, right?
I must’ve missed the post where somebody said it was wrong to be turned on by a certain skin tone or set of facial characteristics.
Anyway, I (like every other Doper who happened to be browsing IMHO) what my subjective take on “an exotic person” was. I gave my best answer. That’s it.
I tried to look it up through google to see if there was some new terminology that I had completely missed. I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find anything that indicated some kind of stereotype either. Sensitivity to others is a good thing but there is such a thing as too much. I deal with people from many parts of the world on a regular basis. I deal with them as individuals without regard to ethnic labels. Sometimes the dealing is positive sometimes not because some are easy to deal with some are not. No doubt some of my customers think I’m motivated by prejudice but I can’t help that and won’t dwell on it.
All that to say, I don’t see that exotic has become a stereo type or any kind of derogatory racial term. Other than your singular anecdote so you have anything to show it has. I’m genuinely curious. I’m also confused about the relationship between your story and the personal history you revealed.
IMO being curious and intrigued and even aroused by someone from a different culture and skin color is a normal human reaction and a better one than xenophobia. It’s how it is expressed that reveals more about the person. I can find someone to be exotic IMO and still treat them with complete respect as a person.
My point in the thread was to explore what* different* people find exotic. It makes complete sense that you would find a different type of person exotic and it’s interesting. I worked with a guy who’s father was black and mother was Korean. Perhaps they found each other exotic.
In the same way what is attractive to men and women varies I wondered what came to mind when people thought of exotic. I can appreciate the beauty of Jessica Simpson but I wouldn’t call her exotic, while a man from Africa, the Middle East, or Japan, might think that.
I wouldn’t see it as rude to point out to someone that exotic is personal perception depending on their background. It’s true.
It might have been in this post.
Yes to see someone in only that way is offensive. IMO the offense is not being found to be exotic, but the shallowness of the view. A person’s physical appearance is one aspect of them as a person.
Recognizing people as the other isn’t the issue. Being aware of racial, cultural, economic, and educational differences, isn’t the issue. It’s how we handle that awareness that counts.
you actually did that in another post not this one, but no matter.
I think that you’re getting way too paranoid about this term.
I am a white Englishman just like millions of others and am not exotic in the least,not even to Americans or French people.
Except that I AM exotic to some remote tribal people in S/E Asia, and to people in some parts of Africa.
Not just exotic but fascinating as well,you could see that our skin colour and general look didn’t seem somehow quite human to them and our every movement was watched with unashamed interest.
It was a little creepy but totally understandable and none of us felt any outrage at being scrutinised so closely.
You are only making a rod for your own back if you keep projecting your issues on your childhood experiences to everything you come across in adult life including innocuous threads on frendly and usually quite liberal MBs like this one.
I’ve been thinking about this since I first saw the thread and I don’t think I perceive any people as exotic.
Exotic places, yes. Clothes, yes. Customs, yes. People, no. I don’t know if it’s some sort of weird disconnect in my brain; I think it’s because I’ve been to exotic locations and worked with people there, and keep coming to the conclusion that people tick in similar ways everywhere. Plus I grew up in what was a bi-cultural household by the standards of the time and, while I’m very conscious of the thousand “little differences” between my mother’s culture and mine well, to me her customs aren’t “exotic” like they were to my classmates growing up.
Yeah, it’s just the modern form of orientalism. A term that people who have led pretty sheltered lives use.
(Or people who write copy for cruise ship tours.)
My home is a melting pot. The only thing truly out-of-the-ordinary in my day-to-day experience is the classic N-European freckled redhead type. Now, I like redheads as much as I like other kinds of women, but I wouldn’t exoteroticise (my neologism, I think) them. Too many echoes of Saartjie Baartman.
There’s a post in another thread on the Dope that uses ‘exotic’ as a noun. Like ‘If I met an exotic, my attraction would depend on other qualities.’ It was a little off-putting. Certainly people are attracted to all types and, for the most part, can’t control that– but they can control how they conduct themselves. And, when it comes to getting laid, they often don’t. There are plenty of ‘exotic’-looking Americans tired of conversing about their background when they were born in New Jersey, or recent immigrants being treated as novelties, trophies or token friends.
I find I’m sorta exotic in the US because of my accent. I look like a yank though 
.
I’ve seen it used as a noun too, or heard it used on TV and never understood it. I assumed it was regional. Strangly enough for no reason I can name, using it as a noun seems somewhat offensive. As an adjective I see it as varying from one person to another and completely subjective. As a noun it seems ypou are lableing groups that probably already have acceptable accurate labels.
Actually, I’d bet you were exotic to at least some people in America (the Midwest, at least). It’s reasonably common for Americans to be attracted to Brits because they have an interesting accent and a different cultural experience. Also, despite a lot of overlap in appearance, a British person will often sort of stand out in America just based on appearance. I’m not saying they stick out like a sore thumb, but in many parts of the country they wouldn’t quite resemble the general population.
I think this is the best critique of the idea of “exotic” that I’ve seen in this thread. It’s not really an offensive term in and of itself, and I wouldn’t fault someone for being interested in someone they found “exotic”, but I would hope they’d get beyond that and try to understand the person underneath the exoticism (I’d also hope they’d try to understand that person’s culture, if it’s different from their own).
I think it’s important to realize that any time you perceive someone as exotic, i.e. “unfamiliar and therefore interesting”, it’s an internal reaction based on your own experience and essentially has nothing to do with the person themselves.
Thank you. This “exotic beauty” stuff is the same thing that makes people with hard-to-pin-down ethnic backgrounds explain their heritage all day to all kinds of strangers who don’t need to know and for whom it is none of their business. (Or blow the strangers off, and risk having everyone who looks like them condemned for being a hostile and hard-to-deal-with people.) I’m just sick of how we can’t step away from our perceived racial identity for a moment anywhere and just be who we are, not “that white guy” or “that exotic girl” or whatever.
To those who still don’t get what I’m talking about, I’ll sum up my feelings this way: to me, “exotic” is how you describe an animal at the zoo. YMMV.
That’s pretty much what I’m saying, except that, personally, I would tend to avoid using the word “exotic” in general just because it has such depersonalizing/dehumanizing connotations. But I’ve been making an effort to think of/talk about people in more individual terms in general, and I’ve found that no meaning is lost while I think quite a bit of fairness is gained.
That’s an excellent point.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist
That. But not too different, in order to have some common ground. Also, they must come right from this different culture. People who have lived here too long don’t qualify as exotic anymore. Also, this culture must be appealing to me.
A Japanese isn’t attractively exotic because I don’t have much interest in Japanese culture. A Tahitian isn’t either because he speaks French. An Arawak is too alien to be exotically attractive.
Spaniards and Russians qualify as somewhat exotic, providing they fit their respective archetype (or appear to). Germans and Canadians aren’t even if they wear a leiderhosen or go to work on a sledge.
Peruvians and Iranians are exotic. Chileans and Pakistani aren’t.
The classical olive-skinned, blue eyed (like in the famous picture of an Afghan kid) central Asian woman is perfectly attractively exotic, her attractiveness being reinforced by two physical traits that aren’t usually associated, and her exoticness by her fascinating and strange culture.
Sorry for not being PC (well, actually, I’m not really sorry).
Well. I must be an awful person, then, because I never miss a chance to ask people where they’re from when I hear an unusual accent. Doesn’t seem to bother them that much. Most people are quite happy to talk about their country, and especially so when the country isn’t well known, IME.
Sorry, love, I don’t dance flamenco 
My life has not been sheltered in the least. The OP asked for subjective opinions on what people find sexy because it strikes them as exotic. Only someone engaging in willful idiocy could fail to understand that in this context “exotic” means “intriguingly different from you, from most of the romantic/sexual partners you’ve had, and/or from the people you usually interact with.”
Exotic exotic exotic. Exotic buckeyes. Exotic.
That’s not at all what I said, but nice try. Aw, what the hell, I’ll throw you your pity party just for the effort.
Things may be different in France, but here, most people who get badgered about their ethnic background all day claim the U.S. as their country–i.e., the same as the people who tend to badger them. One of my friends who deals with this the most is from Imperial Beach, California–about 35 miles south of where he gets badgered about his race these days.
By the by, can someone explain this whole “buckeye” thing to me? I’ve been seeing it bandied about everywhere as if we all know what it means, and I don’t get it at all.
Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist