Yes, preferences are a matter of taste, by definition. Yes, there is beauty and homeliness in every people, however defined. Yes, all definitions of peoples, by race, creed, ethnicity or what have you, are very nearly arbitrary. Yes, there are no sharp boundaries for any people, but rather Venn diagrams palimpesting to absurdity for the species. Yes, comeliness is not the best way to chose your couplings, but comeliness is the topic here.
All that said, there are a lot of comely women in Japan. I am avoiding 'cute', 'pretty' and 'beautiful', but using 'comely' to subsume them all. Japan's heteronormative male preferences in the media, and often in the individual, are for the cute at the expense of the beautiful, to the frequent extent of 'Lolita complex'. Understand not one word of Japanese but this you'll easily figure out watching any Japanese drama: the hot one is 'evil'; the cute one is 'good'; and as everywhere, the plain one is 'friend'.
It's not like I can put aside my preferences any better than anyone else. I have a thing for black silken hair and heavy-lidded eyes; whereas a colleague can't get over smaller tits. "So it goes..." I'd still say that Tokyo has far more comeliness than Toronto, even if Toronto has far more variety of it. Why should that be? Because nature is a bitch is why.
Before I was married I had dated 'white' and South Asian women from teens (when I was also!) to thirties, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. Over the half of my life I have used up I have coupled with East Asian women from ninety to one hundred and sixty pounds, from twenty to thirty-nine years old. Purely on the shallowest level, I have seen more attractive naked bodies on the East Asians. Yes, yes, I am hugely biased by my preference. Here's the thing: East Asians more often have their body fat spread more evenly, and an even layer of it under the skin. Others less so: Steatopygia. Subcutaneous fat hides a lot: wrinkles and cellulite. Who looks less wrinkled: the skinny old dude or the chubby one? Never noticed how smooth and youthful much East Asian skin looks? Subcutaneous fat. Never noticed even chubby East Asian women do not balloon in particular areas? And that Asian breasts seem part of, rather than attached to, their chests? Less steatopygia. These are just facts about populations, due to natural or sexual selection. Sure, you may well sexually select differently in ways not widely popular. I have a thing for namidabukuro. What's that about?!
So why is Japan pretty? Spread around body fat: makes a person look young twice as long, pretty much. Anything is else is preference. Well, even youthfulness is a preference, but nearly universal among men, straight, gay or flexible. Nature's a bitch.
Addendum: There's a discussion on plastic surgery in the comments, which is mostly against it, as my opinion is too apart from repairing significant injury or birth defect, such as a hare lip. Besides both subjects and surgeons consistently going too far, the tragedy of sameness, and probable psychological issues, humans cannot better nature. Look at the last picture. She's much too young for me, but I find her shockingly pretty. Would a surgeon have made that mouth a little too big, the lower lip a bit too plump compared to the top, the namidabukuro a little too large compared to the upper lids, the shoulders and wrists a bit too skeletal, and the forehead with such a high hairline? Never, but I would so do her. Gorgeous comes uniquely only.
Weird, from my observations, Japanese women get really barrelly and fat around the middle when they put on weight - the typical apple shape rather than a pair shape like Westerners. I've also noticed it doesn't take much for Japanese women to put on weight in their face.
ReplyDeleteIf I was a guy, I"d totally go for Korean chicks over Japanese. They (and I know this is a huge generalisation) are much more feisty.
As a woman, who isn't Japanese, thank you for taking this with as little offence as intended.
DeleteHey, 'there's no accounting for taste'. I have certainly seen lovely Koreans, but I no longer have any idea who is real and who is altered, and 'the uncanny valley' is not sexy, to me at least. Feisty? I have no Korean experience, but I have heard stories, both second and third-hand, about psychotic break-ups. My J-wife's bat-shit enough for me. Also, Koreans have bigger legs than I like or expect for NE Asians, though I could get over it. Just watch 'Gangam' again, and those are professional dancers chosen for hotness. The Korean girls in my HS are bigger thigh-down than the Japanese, not that I look!
Japanese have thinner waists for their BMI than you'd expect for a simple reason: long-waisted. Japanese think they are short-legged but are wrong; they are short people who are long-waisted. I mean, their legs are not gnomic, but their waists are long. Also why they look right in kimono but we look stupid, even comparing with similar BMI across 'races'.
Misunderstood. You said they DO put on weight in the middle. Not what I have broadly seen, compared to N. American non-Japanese in any case.
DeleteAnd thick-waisted for their size? Cantonese, in my experience. Didn't mind all that much in my limited experience, mind you. All have their charms...
DeleteI've watched 'Gangam' once in my life and that was enough! But those chicks from Girls Generation, a lot of their hotness has to be surgical.
DeleteI didn't realise I had short legs myself until I moved to Japan and tried on pants and realised they fit me in the length. I think Western women have lower boobs too, as in the distance between your shouders and the start of your boobs. Often when I tried on clothes in Japan, I'd get the yoke seam hitting me at the widest part then blousing out to make me look about 10 months pregnant!
I find the difference physically between working class and middle class in Japan quite interesting. For a 'monoculture', there is a huge difference in appearance.
Another cool woman, taking this post in the spirit it was meant. Thank you. Maybe it's because I was in university in the nineties, when it was the thing to be so hostile against 'the patriarchy' that young men who'd got much less from it than their fathers were thought legitimate targets, that makes me so wary.
DeleteYes, there is a lot of variety here in a (mythical) monoculture. So too of other peoples, even any of our own. Higher boobs? Yes, I agree, at least from what I've had to compare with. Less under-fold in Japan also. Half of that (pun) has to be due to size. Remember reading somewhere that Asian breast tissue is firmer, to which experience broadly agrees. Mixed blessing: also read that firmer breasts have tumours more often.
All K-pop is altered; and much of J-pop; and no little American and British: Canadians don't make enough money. The clues with K-pop are they all look THE SAME, although the Koreans in my school don't, and the Koreans in my school do not have the eyes, noses and lips K-pop does.
Not sure if I agree about Japanese women being exceptionally "hot". Are they hotter than Chinese, Taiwanese or Korean women? I don't think so. Isn't this simply a "feature" of living in a huge city like Tokyo where women tend to dress more elegantly and generally feel a need to look their best in order to get ahead in their company or private life?
ReplyDeleteI do agree though that the Japanese male population doesn't deserve all the hotness. The truly hot actresses and "idols" never make it to the top. Like you said, it's always the more "cute", schoolgirl types that seem to get the best roles and the most attention. Nihon ha, kimochi warui kuni da kara yo neeee...
Japanese men seem to be scared by hot women who look older than, say, 25. They habe too much of their own mind, have seen through (some of) the bullshit going on, and first of all, have had opportunity to understand that Japanese men don't usually develop into great husbands after the honeymoon phase is over. My personal guess is that's the reason why 20-30 year old women are the demographic group most interested in learning foreign languages and traveling abroad.
All that being said, I can confirm from experience that hotness is inseparable from character. I grow cold very quickly once I've seen a person go from being very grown-up, elegant, and cosmopolitan in the work environment, to being a lazy, all-fleece-clad couch potato binging on variety shows and hating on Chinese people.
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I won't address each of these points, but I agree with some and not with others, shall we say. Anyway, the title's wording is 'click bait'. I'd agree strongly there's too little hotness and too much cute, and that it's socialized.
DeleteHotness is inseparable from character -- I agree.
DeleteLots of eye candy in Tokyo. When I go back to the States, I wince everywhere I look. It's bad enough that people insist on turning themselves into diabetic blobs (the odds are stacked against most anyway), but white women tend to age horribly (young to middle aged). Asian women are far more likely to keep it together until their 50s, when they completely go into grandma mode...
ReplyDeletePretty much agreed. Now be fair, you have the same preferences as me, right? However, 'race' comments aside, drinking a litre of sugar water a day and a day's calories in a couple of meals a day is going to make anyone look spherical. Driving everywhere don't help neither. In short, N. American suburbs are the devil. I lived in one for two years in my thirties and there was almost nobody attractive who wasn't inappropriately young, and not even most of those.
DeleteI don't mean to brag at all - but you guys repeatedly make the mistake of equaling "Western" with "North American". There's a third place that's called Europe, and we don't (yet?) have the urban sprawl and all its related problems. Sure, some places and people here look like they've been implanted from the US mid west. But in general, we have plenty of beautiful women, a French revolution (so most of modern Japans problems have been overcome here hundreds of years ago), good food, and much less "money is god" mentality.
DeleteWe still are a miserable bunch who find optimism suspect, but that's because we generally don't know how truly dark societies as the Japanese one are.
You're invited to try Europe for a change. It's not great but at least it's not Japan.
No such error on my part. I do try to specify 'N. American'. I do have my E.A. preference, but I will agree that any European ethnicity as a group is more attractive than the same ethnicity as a group in N. America, except my own: British are more homely in Britain than in N. America.
DeleteI'm only comparing women from two regions I have have extensive experience with...
DeleteActually, I prefer darker skin, dark hair, dark eyes..., but not necessarily Asian (east Asian, I mean); Growing up in Southern California, my girlfriends were almost never white-skinned. A dark-skinned, well-built Japanese girl, though... Oh, man...
Ha ha. Hey, preferences run the gamut. If I were going to go into more detail, my preferences find the highest hits per capita in Japan, but not the hardest hits. To put it another way, there's a whole lot of cute and pretty in Japan, but not much gorgeous. I don't find so many African, South Asian or Slavic beautiful (my tastes only, of course), but when they are, good Christ!
DeleteI have recently been watching K-dramas. I am not going to go into who is hotter or notter....but I am transfixed on the before/after photos of K-actors and their plastic surgery antics. For the most part the surgery is good, much better than some of the North American actor's plastic surgery but sometimes I am shocked. The difference can be so vast, I don't know how I would feel dating someone who had plastic surgery. Some of the surgeries done change the eye shape for both the lower and upper lids so much it's detracting instead of alluring.
ReplyDeleteI do not like plastic surgery, apart from injury or true birth defect. But even if I could put that aside the two disgusting things about it in practice are: surgeons and customers always take it much too far, and everyone comes out looking too similar.
DeleteI see plastic surgery (had by young, perfectly fine looking women) the same way as dressing too skimpy or putting on too much make-up. It's another way for women to turn themselves into objects of sexual desire - for whatever reason they might have.
DeleteA woman who'll go as far as to spend a fortune to have their body cut apart signal "I have no self esteem and I'm eager to do whatever it takes to please".
I wouldn't try and get into a serious relationship with someone who had a lot of plastic surgery, but it can signal an image of sexual promiscuity which works for all men on a very basic level.
I have opinion on plastic surgery which is to adjust a birth defect or in cases of injury, but where does that put people dating. Should, upon first encounter, you question the use of plastic surgery and then call it off based on that? Or not knowing and after dating for a short period of dating you find out, would it be a deal breaker. Though not faced with these choices as I am married, I would like to think that I could look passed my prejudice of plastic surgery. Just like people are expected to look passed other physical aspects and differences of others to see the person 'inside'.
Delete'SusieTron', you have a better way of looking at in principle than I have, but I'm confident that getting unnecessary* plastic surgery speaks to a person's values as something I don't respect, and/or their psychological state as something I can't deal with. The face we are born with is not our fault; the face we choose is something we are very responsible for.
Delete*What that is can be debated.