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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Aibu to think black women are still dealing with the European version of beauty

75 replies

Metoodear · 04/06/2018 20:23

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5802731/Journalist-apologises-sexist-Serena-Williams-interview.html

Just thinking about why the feelings are Why Serena would be worried about the other lady’s “model” looks my question is to whom she is quite slim and has smallish bum and tbh that would not be seen as that attractive to May black cultures also in a thread about niki manij people often white posters views her as over weight in many black cultures a size 14 would actually been seen as you needeing a good feed

Small bottoms and boobs and a stick think figure would not be viewed as attractive
Different cultures have different standards of beauty

OP posts:
Bowlofbabelfish · 05/06/2018 09:44

I think Serena Williams is stunning. She’s got a strong, powerful athletic body, she has real poise and grace. Sharapova is beautiful too, in a different kind of way.

Absolutely disgraceful what the interviewer said. They’re professional atheletes - he should have been focusing on form, howbthey are doing this season etc.

Some twat of a journalist interviewed Hilary Clinton a while back and kept asking her where her suit was from. She shot him down quite well... of course god forbid one interviews one of the most politically powerful women on the planet about her actual JOB. Just as god forbid one would interview one of the best female tennis players of all time about actual sport.

So yes, sexist as hell. Racist as hell too. Serena and Venus seem to get so much abuse for Existing As Successful Black Women dont they?

Of course there are white standards of beauty - just look at the market for bloody skin whiteneing cream and the way Bollywood actresses are encouraged to be as white as possible.

TheHulksPurplePanties · 05/06/2018 09:48

Of course, I could have posted many links showing that people tend to marry within their 'race' but it seemed hardly worthwhile as Google isn't something I have unique access to. It's on the rise but unusual.

I think it was your assertion that women in Africa don't feel pressured by European standards of beauty that pissed people off, not the claim that most people marry within their race, which is fairly obvious historically for a wide variety of reasons.

As for judging my intelligence based on how I type on an internet forum on my phone, I think you'll find it's not a very accurate judge.

pencilSharpenerer · 05/06/2018 09:57

"I think it was your assertion that women in Africa don't feel pressured by European standards of beauty that pissed people off"

Why should anyone be pissed off by my opinion (not assertion)? Because it's unfeminist? I'd say I'm likely in a better position to have this opinion and be correct than most on the thread.

"As for judging my intelligence based on how I type on an internet forum on my phone, I think you'll find it's not a very accurate judge."

Perhaps but given a paucity of information we need to make do. "internet" is capitalised and your use of "judge" as opposed to a word like 'indication is a little unusual

Moonkissedlegs · 05/06/2018 10:00

This absolutely is a problem that overwhelmingly affects women, and especially black women.

Did any tennis commentator ever comment on Roger Federer's absolutely appalling hairstyle that aged him by about 20 years? Do football commentators ever comment on the looks of footballers who are less than bless aesthetically? No they are all held up gods.

Menwhile Venus and Serena (not to mention Michelle Obama actually) get shit about being men dressed as women and all sorts of other stuff.

pencilSharpenerer · 05/06/2018 10:11

"Did any tennis commentator ever comment on Roger Federer's absolutely appalling hairstyle that aged him by about 20 years?"

Yes. Many.

www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=roger+federer+hair&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gws_rd=ssl

"Do football commentators ever comment on the looks of footballers who are less than bless aesthetically?"

Yes. Many.

www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=ugly+wayne+rooney&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

These "held up gods" (?) get shit. Really sorry that facts get in the way of your feminism.

BlueBug45 · 05/06/2018 10:15

@pencilSharpenerer while I may have an issue with my grammar while writing on a phone with autocorrect, neither myself or other posters have issues with our comprehension skills.

If you make blanket comments about a diverse group of people expect to be called out.

@Laiste the poster wouldn't make those comments in a room containing black women.

TumbleTussocks · 05/06/2018 10:17

Ooh pencil - you put a random apostrophe before indication in your strike out Grin.

TheHulksPurplePanties · 05/06/2018 10:18

I'd say I'm likely in a better position to have this opinion and be correct than most on the thread.

You say it's an opinion not an assertion, but you're saying you're in a better position to have this opinion and be correct despite not knowing the nationalities or race of the people on this thread so you're claiming to be right, therefore, asserting.

As for internet being capitalized, I follow the AP Stylebook, so no, not capitalized.

And my use of the word "judge", well, that's what you're doing.

YesBarry · 05/06/2018 10:24

Hate the fact that beauty even entered into the dialogue in an interview with a sportswoman.

Fucking sexist bullshit.

But yeah, black women are for sure still held to white beauty standards. Which is shit also. I think there is more recognition of beauty of skin colour and body shape, and easier to by make up for POC but still quite bad.

araiwa · 05/06/2018 10:28

Beauty standards tend to be the opposite of what a group tends to naturally have.

In the uk, white women spend millions on tanning products as they want a 'healthy glow', yet in asia they spend millions on skin whitening products. Go figure

Moonkissedlegs · 05/06/2018 10:33

pencilSharpenerer what you have linked to there is several articles all from June 2017 about Federer possibly having dyed his hair blonde.

I don't remember at the height of his career someone asking him in a press conference why he insists on sporting circa 1992 curtains? I don't remember people asking him if he is jealous of other male tennis players looks and physiques? Was he ever asked to 'give us a twirl and tell us about your outfit' as Eugenie Bouchard was?

And yes, Wayne Rooney got a lot of shit about his looks. He also got a lot of shit about being a cheating cunt head and a generally unpleasant person. Generally though, people don't care what footballers look like (and there are many ugly footballers!) they care about their performance on the pitch.

ginnybag · 05/06/2018 10:37

It doesn't address the issue of different standards, but never have I liked Robert Downey more than when he called out a fan for the double standard of judging the worth of actresses by their looks only. Conference thing for the Avengers movie, I think it was, and some eejit teenage boy asked Scarlett Johannsen how much of a diet she'd been on to fit in the catsuit.

It was beautiful to watch, a real 'Is no-one going to ask me that? We could compare notes, see which lettuce worked best!'' moment.'

The whole room was laughing, as he'd intended, but there was a serious point he made about the nature of the questioning she'd received in comparison to her male co-stars and it was great to see one of them pick it up and bat it back, and in a way which highlighted how stupid it was.

Sparklefloof · 05/06/2018 10:51

pencilSharpenerer

Women in Africa definitely feel pressurised by European standards of beauty, I don't know why you think they don't. Skin lightening creams (some of which are very harmful) are popular and you have women chemically straightening their hair/ hating their natural hair. Then there's the colourism within black communities ( team light skin or dark skin) etc etc.

velourvoyageur · 05/06/2018 11:09

I think that is a different beauty standard. It is taking the 'bare bones' of a stereotyped European woman and making it into an ideal yes, because we live in a racist society but also because this ineradicable discrepancy between reality and ideal can be mined to within an inch of its life in terms of selling products which claim to close the gap - but it's different to the ideal white European women are supposed to conform to. White European women are not allowed to simply be what they already are - they have their own distinct hoops to jump through. Paler skin and straighter hair are not these hoops.
What our beauty standards have in common are that they get us to strive to be something that we can never quite be, so it follows that constitutively they would be different.

Battleax · 05/06/2018 11:17

Mass media is fragmenting, which will help.

Nothing you can do about dickish interviewers, though.

manicinsomniac · 05/06/2018 11:28

But blimey, that cat suit is shit. On anyone. And mainly I was thinking: is this practical for playing tennis?

I think it was specially selected to be practical for her atm. On the radio it said that she was wearing it for medical reasons to prevent blood clots.

I agree with the OP about beauty standards but I do think there is such a think as being objectively beautiful (within one culture certainly but possibly globally). Attraction is in the eye of the beholder for sure, but idk about beauty. We are conditioned to see certain things as beautiful and I think we naturally appreciate things like symmetry and even features in faces. Even if I don't think someone is attractive personally, I can sometimes see that they are objectively beautiful.

I don't know if that makes sense but, in summary, I think:
There are some people who are beautiful in the eyes of everyone (from their culture at least) because that's down to objective beauty ideals.
But most people are beautiful in the eyes of some people because that's down to subjective beauty preferences.

velourvoyageur · 05/06/2018 12:09

I don't really agree that beauty exists as some sort of universal & I do think that beauty comprises much more of a tacitly affective response than we might think - it involves some sort of emotional 'click' when we are visual receptors of this object that contains properties pleasing to us, like a soothing exterior match to our running internal dialogue (which usually is continuously frustrated and thwarted because we encounter other real-life elements which are contradictory to our preferences). So then your own response becomes the necessary second element in our experience of 'beauty', you complete it, without you, there's no beauty. Because we live in so-called 'mass culture' and beauty and sex are often sold together, it seems like there's some established objectivity, but perhaps it's more the case that we're all very similar and just produce the same affective responses to the same stimuli - but which could be more diverse across the same cultural groups if we were not moulded by the same things. (Who knows? Is our aesthetic attraction to people half-artificial? If we're not presented with form and told 'this is good' via the 'fashion system', would we really start to fancy people we don't currently, or would we have a generation of asexuals, as we would still be primed to take our cue from an exterior source but there would be no source to shape us...anyway.)

I mean, I'm not attracted to men, and seeing perfectly symmetrical, very marketable male faces, for me, it's just eyes and a nose and a mouth, they don't really have much abstract sense other than I recognise that it is a human face - they don't provoke an cohesive affective impression and so are not signs of anything except what they literally are (and therefore can't be some kind of currency). So the word 'beautiful' seems out of place as it just seems I'd be parroting what others say. That's not to say I never think any man is beautiful Christian Navarro, but it's very very rare.

downthestrada · 05/06/2018 12:25

I have family in Africa and they definitely are affected by European beauty ideals. I am mixed race with curly hair that I sometimes chemically straighten (for UK work purposes) but my hair texture is still different from their's. It was uncomfortable to have them fawning over my hair, my body shape, my skin colour and my pictures of white friends on my phone. It was nice that they were taking an interest in me, but also really, really sad. They were saying they wished they had my skin colour, body shape etc. whilst I was thinking (and saying) - but you're so beautiful yourself!

I think they watch a lot of international TV and advertising, so that's part of it.

Bowlofbabelfish · 05/06/2018 12:29

I think just from western history you can see how what is classed as attractive changes over time - a wander round the national gallery will show you this.

There is some work done on objective beauty - it seems to be linked to symmetry, and proportion. More symmetrical faces are judged as more beautiful and certain hip to waist ratios in women are also judged more attractive by men. I have no idea how cross cultural that work is though - all the examples I’ve seen have been white faces.

The catsuit was practical looking - I think she had blood clots after the birth of her daughter recently and was very ill?

downthestrada · 05/06/2018 12:30

The subtext of the questioning to Serena was, I believe, "you may well have all these titles, be the GOAT, have married a billionaire and have a healthy child BUT wouldn't you rather look like Maria?" And worse, for short, "Maria is more deserving of success because she is beautiful".

This demeans both women. Serena for the reasons people have described, and Maria because it is reductive - her (earned) achievements are nothing in relation to her (unearned) looks.

THIS is it exactly.

Eliza9917 · 05/06/2018 13:23

Metoodear Mon 04-Jun-18 21:04:35
NewYearNewMe18
They date black men so one would presume they are not trying to look attractive to your average white guy who like the late moss look

That's pretty fucking racist and stereotypical in itself.

So who does the average white guy go for then?

Battleax · 05/06/2018 13:39

So who does the average white guy go for then?

I think she was saying all the white men fancy Kate Moss. I wonder if anyone has told all the white men this?

Eliza9917 · 05/06/2018 14:52

I wonder. This attitude is shockingly common though.

My DP is white, stocky and sports a skinhead. Cockney accent to go with it. He also had a staffy until we lost him last year. He also had my 7-8st corso obv when we got together.

We live in hipster heaven Margate full of all the liberals that aren't as liberal as they think.

There's nothing we love more than the snidey looks he gets when first entering somewhere on his own (because he's obv a racist don't ya know) and then the looks of surprise when brown me walks in to join him.

Hypocrites, the lot of them.

user1499173618 · 06/06/2018 08:23

Pot - kettle - black, Eliza Halo

Charley50 · 06/06/2018 10:37

When you hear on the news that the 100 best paid sportspeople are ALL men, it's so fucking depressing.

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