As a believer not of “race” but of “ethnicity” and “culture”, I say that the standard of beauty is truly this: beauty is skin-deep. I am in love with this woman. I probably won’t come back to this website, but let me put it this way: my girlfriend isn’t a slinky long-haired blonde with lanky legs and curvy hips. But she is a woman of power (see Proverbs 31:10 to the end of the chapter).

All of humanity is of one family. I happened to have met a Maori woman and she met a Dano-Norwegian Jew. The rest is history; the unbearable abyss is bridged only by love.

Eat your heart out, slim blonde green-eyed girls.

Okay, please reference this. I’ve had black friends for over a decade who shaved their heads, and none of ‘em were trying to look white. I would ask them if they were trying to look white, but they would think I was an idiot, and I already have enough reasons for my friends to think I’m an idiot. I don’t need to look like I might think something as freaky as that.

But, really, please back up this claim with something other than your opinion. You’ve never seen pictures of Egyptians with shaved heads? You don’t know of African cultures where shaving your head is normal? You haven’t seen black and white guys both shave their heads to look like Asian martial arts stars? Do you really believe blacks shave their heads to look white? Or are you just trying to see how gullible I am? (I looked it up in the dictionary, and my picture is not there.)

The idea that fat people are sexually unviable is strange, though. Why would they be? Why would fertility symbols be obese if fat people are sexually unviable? Why would we have cultures in Africa that count rolls of fat to calculate who is sexually most attractive? Why would we have ritual feeder cultures where some women are kept immobile and fed lots of food so they will become obese?

For that matter, why do you assume that most cultures don’t have the resources to create obese people? This may be true for some hunter/gatherer cultures, but it’s not true once you move into stratified sociological forms.

Also, I’ve done a lot of study on anthropology and beauty myths. It happens to be one of the things I know about. I just gave counter-examples to your assertions. I would appreciate it if you’d acknowledge you’re wrong here, especially as you’ve admitted your assertions are based on a general and incomplete knowledge of the subject rather than a specific source.”

I’ll definitely concede that neither “painful-to-look-at” or “out and out” are accurate, measurable terms. I did not intend them to be, but in the context of the rest of my post I should have (intended accurate, measurable terms).

I do have something of a source that suggests that an ‘hourglass’ figure has a legitimate claim to being the basic standard of beauty (for women). I’m somewhat reluctant to link to it because it also espouses a number of tenets that sets off my internal red flags - rather, I’m putting it here in the vein of I Didn’t Just Make This Shit Up Myself.

However, I won’t back down from asserting that my “straw poll” and “130 kg” queries are legitimate points.

If anyone wants to make the claim that hatred toward fat people stems a large part in their being seen as sexually unviable and because of that we can conclude that our society pathologizes sexuality too much, that’s fine. I’d agree with that statement more than I’d disagree with it. I just don’t see “norms of beauty vary by culture” (it’s hard to think of any intangible concepts that DON’T - off the top of my head: smart, dumb, funny, delicious, hot, cold, freedom, justice) as anything but an oversimplified sidestep.

Good point, Sylph.

Because there’s absolutely no difference between a hot comb that burns your scalp and fortifying conditioner.

“And the men shaving their hair question? That was a black style first. The question was rhetorical. Black men did not shave their heads to look white, and if you asked one that question, you probably would deserve whatever response you got.”

will, no one’s claiming that Black men shaved their heads to look White. What Silenced was trying to say (if I may speak for you, Silenced) was that Black men shave their heads to get rid of that unacceptable Black hair. Obviously, they aren’t copying a White style because White men would have no need to do the same - their hair is acceptable.

“Painful to look at” can’t be measured. Yes, lots of people don’t like to look at things that are “painful to look at.” That’s because they are by definition painful to look at. However, also obviously, what one person will find painful to look at may not be painful to another person.

When you ask whether the veneration of anorexic thinness in the modeling industry trickles down to what average people want to look at, you’re shifting the goal posts. You discussed what cultures venerate, not the tastes of the “average person.” Both arguments are problematic; howeever, it’s quite clear that there are dominant and influential cultures of veneration of anorexic appearance that exist today, and therefore that your argument that such things are rare doesn’t match with the evidence. If we were to switch to a metric of the “average person”, then I think we’d find the data there interesting, but it would hardly prove any theory about what “cultures like.” There’s usually a tension between the expression of culture as what people say about themselves, and what they enact. For instance, in the US we say that we are monogamous, when in fact we practice serial monogamy. Both aspects of culture have to be weighed.

Also, I’ve done a lot of study on anthropology and beauty myths. It happens to be one of the things I know about. I just gave counter-examples to your assertions. I would appreciate it if you’d acknowledge you’re wrong here, especially as you’ve admitted your assertions are based on a general and incomplete knowledge of the subject rather than a specific source.

If you do indeed have a specific source which is counter to what I’ve learned in my study of sex & sexuality across human culture, please do provide it.

You’re universalizing ‘we’ to too great an extent. Just for a thought experiment, if we straw polled a random section of the population with a full body picture of someone suffering from anorexia nervosa and asked them if they found that attractive, what do you think the results would show?

And I don’t see how labeling something an aesthetic value is supposed to be damning when the topic in question deals with aesthetic values.

“There are lots of historically documented societies that value obesity — and again, “out and out obesity” is an imprecise term.”

I guess I did say we should use more precise terms, and ‘out and out obesity’ isn’t any more precise than ‘overweight’. How about 130 kg +?

That’s a problematic measure because for most of our history we didn’t have the means or surplus to create many in that weight range - cultures can’t normalize around people they don’t think even exist. But if we want precise definitions, we have to start somewhere.

“When you say you don’t know of many cultures that value these things, what are you basing that on?”

My own experience and accumulated knowledge - which is of course incomplete and fallible.

And the men shaving their hair question? That was a black style first. The question was rhetorical. Black men did not shave their heads to look white, and if you asked one that question, you probably would deserve whatever response you got.

We value bodies that are similar to anorexic bodies. “Painful to look at” is an aesthetic value. Of course we don’t find them painful to look at. That doesn’t mean that some of our models don’t die from starvation, which is clearly venerating an extreme kind of thinness.

There are lots of historically documented societies that value obesity — and again, “out and out obesity” is an imprecise term.

When you say you don’t know of many cultures that value these things, what are you basing that on?

It maybe that the “visual appeal” increment she gains to her community of potential mates is sufficient to put her over the bar to reproductive success. If reproducing is/was important to her, then that might be worth some emotional problems or even a reduction in lifespan, from her point of view.

I think we need to keep her point of view in mind.”

The reproduction analogy is just plain silly - this is the 21st century, not the prehistoric savannah. But I agree that individual choices in this regard be left as individual choices (duh) - if someone wants social appeal more than their health, that’s their prerogative.

Yet it is still possible to argue that the standards themselves are wrong, while leaving individuals and individual choices out of the picture. For instance: gay person who wants to stay in the closet = that’s cool, that’s his choice. Gay people having to have to make that choice = that’s bad.

“The way you phrase this seems to imply that you’re referring to a universal standard of beauty, rather than a culturally relative, media-manufactured standard.”

Well, there are some commonalities. I don’t know too many cultures where either out and out obesity or painful-to-look-at anorexia are held up at the top of the pyramid. Obviously, “thin” and “overweight” encompasses a lot more than that - but maybe that just means we need to subdivide into more precise terms.

will, you obviously have the best of intentions, but I don’t think there is any serious dispute that black women are viewed less attractive as a group than white women are. I could list all the unfortunate comments I’ve heard made in “guys’ talk” over the past couple of years, and they’d be more than all the “black actress/songstress makes it big” anecdotes you could up spanning the past eight decades. Hell, just give me five minutes to Google the right key words.

“As for black men shaving their heads, I had never heard anyone suggest he did it to look more white. Wasn’t that another style that whites picked up from blacks?”

I don’t know, will. The long and sordid relationship between black people’s hair - in particular black women’s - and normative standards of beauty, is sort of like the remedial/prereq course here. If you don’t know anything about it, and it doesn’t appear that you do, then I doubt your ability to say anything informed on this particular topic.

Robert, I don’t think it’s really that hard for the average woman of any class or race to “reproduce.”

What relevance does that have? The average person is a statistical construct; it is individuals who make choices and face consequences.

To put it in far simpler terms: THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SPERM. You can buy it from a sperm bank, for pete’s sake. Therefore, there is no competition for sperm, and being more attractive will not make a woman likelier to get sperm and reproduce.

But to bring this back to the original subject, while none of the women I’ve mentioned looked “white,” they’ve all been representative of the body type that capitalism was selling at the time. (Uh, not including Queen Latifah in that; she was just an example of someone working in Hollywood who didn’t look white.)

But the idea that Naomi Campbell looks white or unattractive is bizarre. Do you think Queen Latifah can’t find work? Was Dreamgirls a flop? Yes, Hollywood is wacky about the ways people should look, but claiming those standards are “white” seems awfully hard to support.

As for black men shaving their heads, I had never heard anyone suggest he did it to look more white. Wasn’t that another style that whites picked up from blacks?

Also, notice how he used 3 different actresses that haven’t been household names in a few decades. That says something about trends, doesn’t it?

Your minimization of the pressures on black women is insulting. Go read Angry Black Woman, and come back when you’re better informed.

Yes, race can be a factor in standards of beauty. In more racist times that was screamingly obvious. But things started getting strange around the 1980s, when, for example, Asian and black women would dye their hair blond. Or metallic red. Or purple. I just did a very informal test; according to CBS, the most beautiful woman today is Aishwarya Rai. Now, you could argue that she has “white” features. But those white features are Indian, and they’re unattainable by most whites. Tyra Banks hardly looks white, and no way you’re going to tell me Angela Bassett looks white.

But what they do have in common is that very few women of any race can look like that, and if you make the attempt, you’re going to spend a lot of money. What’s being sold here is a very expensive product.

Yes, racists apply race to their standard of beauty. Their loss. And who wants to date a racist anyway?

I’ve always loved women whose features are strongly their own. Michelle Yeoh. Grace Jones. My first models of black beauty were Nichelle Nichols and Gail Fisher (for the youngsters, that’s Uhura on Star Trek and Peggy on Mannix, a TV show of about the same time). Neither looked white.

I don’t mean to generalize from my own example, or to set myself up as some sort of saint. But if you look at the working black models today, you’ll see a lot of gorgeous women that no one would say had white features.

But as far as beauty image goes, the appropriate class values venerate women with caucasian features, certain frames, hair that looks white (though this can be chemically acheived), and pale skin.

Can you imagine Octavia Butler ever being able to fit herself into the acceptable beauty image of wealthy womanhood? She was tall and large, with a prominent underbite, African features, and dark skin.

Surely you know about things like paper bag tests. They affect wealthy people as well as poor people.

Sometimes caucazoid features combined with a skinny frame can ameliorate the kind of vitriol aimed against dark-skinned women, but most dark-skinned women find themselves judged less attractive and less worthy than their lighter counterparts. Whether or not you want to admit it, part of the beauty ideal for wealthy women is whiteness.

The second link is dated, but I thought it was worth including for bits like the ones you and I have quoted here. And also, for the fellow who thinks only thin is attractive, “In a study of British and Ugandan students’ evaluation of body-shapes, the Ugandans rated an ‘obese’ female figure much more attractive than the British (they were also more tolerant of too-skinny males).”

And I never mean to offer any study as the final word on anything. Human knowledge constantly changes, and studies are always limited by the biases of the studiers.

“Weight is the least of my concerns,” a black woman friend told me last year, after praising my hair for being soft and curly, and my skin for being pale.

We belong to the same class.