Pardon me, TubaDiva, but I did not knowingly rip-off Lenny Bruce. I was merely stating the obvious, (ie the Halle Berry is a gorgeous woman) as did he (ie that Lena Horne was a babe and Kate Smith was not). I’d wager that Lenny Bruce, despite all his other fine qualities, was not the first person to notice that Lena Horne was better looking than Kate Smith. So please don’t rag on me for not quoting Lenny Bruce, unless you’re prepared to rag on each and every poster who states the obvious when someone famous made had a similar comment.
I am blonde and green eyed. My son’s latest girlfriend is a gorgeous black girl. Before her he has dated a redhead, a blonde, and a hispanic.
Now how does that dating/mom thing work again?
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- I asked a few friends as old as I am (30 ish) and we all agreed: we (all white) guys had rarely ever been given signals by black women that they were interested- or if they did signal, we didn’t understand it as such. None of us goes anyplace that an interracial couple couldn’t go; it just seemed that black women never seemed real hot on the idea.
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- We all noticed that interracial dating seems more common among people ten years younger than us, but this wasn’t any sort of scientific poll. We blamed it on MTV (as usual). - MC
The topic of why there are more black male/white female relationships vs black female/white male relationships was debated by several of us during our stay in the army (where it was very prevalent), the only thing we came up with was that the black males who were dating white females were not intimidated by white females and more willing to risk rejection and ask them out. Whereas the white males were more intimidated by the black females and left the idea as a mere fantasy. The old nothing ventured, nothing gained adage.
Something sorta on topic, sorta off.
How come the most attractive black women are usually mixed? This isn’t just my personal view, but look at all the acctresses, models, etc. That girl in Clueless (Who I also think was in Mo’Money), the one in Boomerang (tip of my tongue but can’t remember her name), the one in MI2 (Actually, I wasn’t sure what she was except English, but DAMN). The ones they show in movies almost always have a euro, white-bread, cracker cast to their features (thinner lips, smaller nose, straight hair that flows instead of stiff that don’t go nowhere in a hurricane, lightter skin), instead of a more pronounced African feature set.
Is it just me noticing this? Or am I off base?
Are they really prettier or is it that the more African features (full lips, flatter nose, darker skin) are less acceptable to some people? I’ve seen outrageously beautiful dark-skinned African-featured women. Are these total goddesses (I’m a hetero white female, but hey, I can enjoy beauty too) less beautiful than Thandie Newton or Halle Berry or is it that we have been taught that white is better, lighter skin is better than darker skin, European features are better than African?
I think we have a messed-up idea of beauty. I find it interesting that all of the black women discussed above are light-skinned European-looking women. Doesn’t anyone know any attractive dark-skinned women?
This feeds into the white man/black woman relationship situation. If light-skinned women are prized, then less white men will be in relationships with black women (in general–of course there are exceptions). I find that pretty sad.
I had a girlfriend in high school whose father was black and whose mother was Latino. (This was back when you didn’t have to worry about saying “black” in public.) Unfortunately, her mother hated the idea of having her hang around boys, and probably would have put a chastity belt on her if anybody still made them.
Well, to answer honestly, I generally do not find black women attractive. I don’t think it’s skin color so much as features (face and body). I do find Tyra Banks very attractive, and Halle Berry is good looking too. But in real life I can count the number of black women that I’ve found attractive on one hand.
In fact, I can only recall one. And she had the most amazing green eyes (Hi Stephanie! Are you out there?).
Make of that what you will.
Ceejaytee wrote:
If you grow up in a household with white parents, you get used to seeing white features from a very early age (as in, from birth). People form a lot of their personal preference for what looks good and what doesn’t while they’re still babies, and generally speaking, what your used to is what looks good.
It’s an ancient survival instinct. Mommy and daddy survived the rigors of disease, predators, starvation, etc. until they were old enough to have you, right? If mommy and daddy have X, Y, and Z features, then maybe X, Y, and Z features are indicators of good survivability and thus good breeding stock. X, Y, and Z features are also indicators of similar genes, thus increasing the chance that your mate (should you choose your mate based on X, Y, and Z features) will have a genome similar to yours and thus increase her chances of passing on genes identical to yours.
Wow, and all this time I thought that beauty is based on opinion…:rolleyes:
Ceejaytee wrote:
Sure do. One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known is very dark-skinned. I met her in college. She had a boyfriend. I was sad. We were good friends, though.
Back when I was an undergrad pursuing a cultural anthropology degree, I remember several professors claiming this parent hypothesis. The hypothesis is simply that people select partners based on a parent’s features. So, if a man had a mother with dark hair and light skin, then he would likely select a partner with dark hair and light skin, all other variables kept equal. I suppose that this could also work in same-gender relationships as well. Dunno though.
The problem with this idea is that “all other variables” are never kept equal. So many other factors play a role in attraction–including say education, social class, religion, common interests, etc.–that ethnic features can be considered relatively unimportant. On the other hand, if you give 100 men a Playboy and ask them to sort the women on basis of attraction, you may find those men rate women higher if they look like mom.
As a side note, I have Caucasian features, yet there’s an African woman I work with who I’m very attracted to.
Women in our culture have been oppressed as women (institutionalized sexism), and black people have been oppressed as black people (institutionalized racism), therefore…
We have some white men (not victim of either),
some white women (victim of sexism),
some black men (victim of racism),
and some black women (victim of both).
(Never mind the finer points such as the ways in which institutionalized oppression also hurts white men or how the situation of black women is not precisely understood as the sum total of sexism + racism)
So…white woman meets black man at party. Each has the personal experience of some legacy oppression even if (as we hope) much of that is fading away these days. Each is on the other side of the one that the other has been the victim of. So there’s a set of tensions, a mirror-image set of guilts and angers that sort of balance out, see?
And…white man meets black woman at party. Instead of mirror-image mixtures of tensions composed of guilts and angers, any such angers are all on one side (hers) and any relevant guilts are both on the other side (his). Much more awkward.
Personally I don’t find black women attractive at all. I can tell if a black women would be perceived good looking by others, but I feel no sexual attraction whatsoever.
I am certain it is not the skin colour, but rather the features. I have seen women who are clearly mixed and have very dark skin whom I did find attractive, but they didn’t have pronounced black facial features.
I have heard that you find attractive the kinds of people you met when growing up, and I didn’t grow up around black people.
I know for sure that most men are not attracted to women with zombie features.
I imagine there are other factors at play than that - because it seems quite possible to meet people who aren’t like those you grew up with, and find them exotic and appealing, rather than just alien.
In the past two years., I’ve met black women while traveling in Ethiopia, Somalia, Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname whom I was extremely attracted to, and would have happily fallen for any of them. Their beauty was certainly of a standard that exceeded my own, as were their other personal qualities…
Widely reported recent research:
"Tinder and dating apps changing society by encouraging more interracial marriages "
Haven’t seen the original research, and that’s not where I saw it first.
Both of the old links above are now defunct. However, my own experiences of Unsupported Hearsay I Have Encountered on the Internet [note caveats] is that in general black men are more likely to find white women attractive than black women are to find white men attractive,* and that black men are more likely to find women with more body fat attractive than white men are (leaving a pool of white women considered “fat” by white guys but “beautiful” by black guys) which would influence the types of pairings. This may all be (and probably is) complete bullshit, but it is a thing I have heard from multiple people.
Mind you, I have also heard, from some of the less stable of my Facebook friends, that the increasing number of interracial couples being seen in popular media is a deliberate “social engineering” exercise. They never really say why anyone would bother to go to such an effort, but I suspect I know the reasons they’re thinking of and I really don’t want them to say it out loud.
As for the OP, I’ve met black women I’ve found stunning and ones I’ve found ugly and the whole range in between. And there’s nothing inherently racist about not finding another individual attractive, although there may be in the way one expresses that lack of attraction.
- Please don’t immediately leap to the usual joke about why this might be. Let’s stay classy, people.
Definitely. My mom could pass for Swedish. My wife is North African. Not black but definitely not a blue-eyed blonde.
As for black women, I’d have happily dated one back when I was single, it just didn’t happen. Same thing for Asians.
Personal observation base on TV commercials I’ve seen lately - there are several with mixed race couples where the man is white and the woman is black. The only ad I’ve seen that has a black man and a white woman shows them dancing together (theatrically, not romantically) and there is no suggestion that they’re a “couple.” I’m not sure what, if anything, it means - it’s just something I’ve noticed.