Through searching Google for a front view of an Asian female model, I found a surprising amount of articles and studies on race vs. femininity and race vs. beauty. The comments were the usual, "This is the most racist thing I have ever seen!" but I thought it was quite interesting.

There is this "beauty mask" that some people came up with that supposedly matches most "beautiful people". The closer the features are to this outline, the more beautiful. Of course, this caused a shitstorm because, of course, the mask was Caucasian.

They fit the mask to a Caucasian, an east Asian and an African woman. They all fit it. However, the Asian and the African women had distinctive European traits: thin bridge, smaller top lip, and the Asian woman was not monolided.
I'm not offended by this mask (although the idea that there is a staple "beautiful person" is absurd), rather intrigued. It is very true that most of our country's (and most countries with a larger white population, and even countries like Japan or China) idea of beauty is a white woman with Euro traits. Rarely does a white person imagine a model and think of someone who isn't white. (There are various exceptions, I'm sure. But I'm just using my own experience with people of my area.)

Of course, I'm not speaking for everyone. I personally think that West Asian women and South African women are the most beautiful. While South African women are distinctly more "Euro" than other parts of Africa, West Asian is very different from the usual features you see.

The only thing I thought was wrong about the articles I read was that they were comparing white models to average, middle aged Igbo women (pardon if I spelt that wrong, which I think I did) as their claim that Caucasians are typically more "feminine". This shows the incredible bias that the authors may have. I could be over anaylizing, or being critical. Whether or not they are biased, I thought it was peculiar.

But the biggest problem I see is trying to define beauty as some sort of mathematical or scientific idea. I understand that they are probably using the typical views of beauty in America and Europe (there are definite trends), but not everyone will agree with said generalization. I, for example, disagree strongly with the current standards for beauty. I personally like the women and men of the Greek and Roman eras, and very much from the Georgian and Victorian eras. You typically see shorter, thinner lips and bustier bodies (for the women) in these time periods, with the exception of the Victorian era where a corsetted waist became the ideal. Regardless, it still was a very hourglass shape. This was the opposite in the 20s, where a large bust and curves became somewhat unattractive for most young women. Of course I am not counting women like Mae West or Theda Bara, but they were the sexy, sultry women of the time, rather than the beautiful, striking women.

Another article I read dealt more with femininity vs. race. They compared the faces of a Caucasian woman with typical Euro traits and an African woman with typical African traits, then asked which one is more feminine. (The author had written a very in depth article on the typical view on femininity, which I agreed with.) Typically the obvious choice was the Caucasian.

Then they compared the same Caucasian woman with the African woman in terms of their bodies. Typically the black woman had more curves, a larger bust and backside, which is very much the more feminine shape. The Caucasian women usually were masculinized.

This was interesting because once you saw the full body shots next to each other, it was very obvious that the African women were more feminine. The body has much more of an impact that the face. I think this may be because there are clear ideas of what makes a body masculine or feminine. With a face, it may be more subjective, but a body has very clear distinctions between man and woman.

I'm hoping this doesn't come off as biased or supposedly "racist", but I just found the articles to be interesting, especially because of how in depth they were.

Labels: art, beauty, science