In this blog's brief life, the most frequented post by far addressed the question of whether black men prefer white women. My tentative conclusion was that they like light-skinned blacks with European-ish features, but I haven't run across the data to test the idea.
Standing in line at the supermarket last night, I opened the latest issue of Ebony which featured an article on "Who is Dating Who?" [sic]. The magazine also featured other famous couples. I counted 19 couples, and the darkest, most African looking women by a wide margin was Mrs. Barack Obama shown in the top photo. (Evidently, Barry wanted to prove he was black enough when he chose Michelle). She really was an outlier.
Much more common were women like Porschla Coleman who is dating Russell Simmons (shown in the bottom photo). So, my second (unscientific) stab at the same question produces the same results.
This pattern is consistent with my tastes, by the way, only in the reverse direction. Lighter white women can be beautiful, indeed, but beautiful like a painting. It's the darker white women who really stir the blood, as if a little dose of the exotic is necessary. There were few black men with pasty girlfriends. Too much exotic can turn someone off.
It's been claimed, though how reliably I'm not sure, that Obama married Michelle primarily because she was the smartest woman he knew and he wanted to make sure that his children would inherit as many "smart genes" as possible.
ReplyDeleteExoticness is more like an amplifier of a person's underlying signal of attractiveness: it makes the ugly appear monstrous and the beautiful spellbinding.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we need to invoke exoticness here, though, since the males from dark White groups tend to prefer dark White females over snowy or ebony females.
There may also be a confound that environments that have selected for dark White skin color have also selected independently for sexiness.
I don't know, agnostic. I've had this conversation with a lot of (gay) male friends of mine, and I've noticed a striking trend whereby southern European Meds tend to go for Northern European guys and vice versa. (Which works out nicely.) I'm southern Italian and my favorite guys are invariably blonde, though I can handle the occasional Med as well. :-)
ReplyDeleteI always figured it was the subconscious mind trying to optimize genetic fitness by finding someone with similar enough genes to your own that your general phenotype doesn't get "lost in the shuffle" so to speak, while minimizing the risk of inbreeding. (Even though these are gay guys I assume the underlying rules of attraction are still reproductive in nature, just switched over to men for some unknown reason.)
Then again, I'm not a geneticist, so what do I know?
Its got to be frustrating for black women to notice so many black men chase after so many other ethnicities of females.
ReplyDeleteAsian men seem to face a similar dilemma.
my beauty preference pattern is probably odd :
ReplyDeletewhen it comes to black women, what i like best is medium to dark skin with what i call good facial features. Many nigerian actresses have this look and here is a pic of the french minister for human rights, Rama Yade, originally from Senegal :
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/politiques/276721.FR.php
Not many black american men would go for that, but that's my taste.
One characteristic almost all black african women that I'm into would have is orthognathy, as opposed to prognathy . It's a quite important feature for me. I have never had a preference for light skinned black women . They can be really hot, like Rihanna(!) but i don't automatically favour them.
When it comes to white women , on the other hand , i prefer them unequivocally white, northern euro types with no tan please .
I like mediterranean women too but mostly when they're either not tanned at all or naturally very pale.
I have no attraction to indian/southasian women . The only indian women i've ever been atracted to looked either like white girls or looked like some exotic kind of african girl (dark skinned, nice features and straight hair) .
North east asians can be fine but i'm kind of unfamiliar with them. South est asians, not so great. I dont like the indonesian/philipino look at all .
Does anyone like australian aborigenes or finds them generally attractive ?
Opulently I assent to but I about the collection should acquire more info then it has.
ReplyDelete"It's been claimed, though how reliably I'm not sure, that Obama married Michelle primarily because she was the smartest woman he knew and he wanted to make sure that his children would inherit as many "smart genes" as possible."
ReplyDeleteIf her Princeton thesis is anything to go by (and it's more than we have for her husband's academic performance), her IQ was way below standard for Ivy League, or any university. Downright juvenile.
She was barred from practicig law since the early 90, but that's been hushed.
B.O. married her for her connections, pure and simple.