- Anne Sophie A.
Understanding how racial biaise and discrimination play a big part in desirability and dating prefer
Beauty is in the eyes of the colonizer.
Think about your ideal type of person, what their physical appearance would look like. Do they have fair skin ? Are their hair straight ? Dark or blonde ? Are their eyes blue, green or brown ? Do they conform to the western beauty standard ? Racial minorities such black and brown people, asians, middle eastern are not often in the spotlight when it comes to the dating scene, but where does it come from? In this article, we are going to talk about how colonisation and white supremacy shaped the modern beauty standards and the importance of decolonising it. Because we are not responsible for the toxic ideals that society teaches us when we're born, but we're responsible for the actions we decide to take after we realise it.
With the pain and the violence of colonisation, white supremacy came, took over the whole world and hasn't stopped getting bigger since. With it, the idea that white women were superior to other women from other races, especially black women. Because of their soft, pale skin and straight clean hair, nothing like the dark skin and the nappy head of black women. Even after the slave trade stopped, this idea remained in western society.
Alongside hating their bodies, the colonizer also put it on display for everyone to see and make fun of. Saartjie Baartman (1789-1815), nicknamed as the “Hottentot Venus” by Europeans saw her body being examined and exposed inhumanly throughout her young life. Her experience reinforced the negative view Europeans had on African Womens’ bodies. Saartjie died in 1815 at age 26 in Paris of unknown reasons but even after her death, many parts of her body would go on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris until president Nelson Mandela requested in 1994 that her remains come back to South Africa, her motherland. In March 2002, her remains returned and were buried at Hankey in the Eastern Cape province.
Nowadays, western society’s view of which bodies are the most desireable often excludes women and men of color. Racial discrimation affects the dating life of many, as they’re deemed as nobody’s first choice. Racial stereotypes such as “black women and arab men are aggressive”, “asian men are too feminine” and many others play a big part in it. The history of these is very complex, thus, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact origin of every stereotype, but as we can witness today, biases persists in many people’s mentality.
While some people avoid dating people of color because of stereotypes, others instead prefer dating POC solely because of those. “Black men are strong, dominant and passionate”.With the fact that not all of them are, the sole purpose of dating someone just because of their bodies is objectification, which black and brown people have been subjected to for centuries. With the rise in popularity of kpop and anime, the Asian Fetish , alongside it, grew bigger and bigger on social media. Koreaboos and Weaboos (people compulsively obsessed with Korea/Japan) only have eyes for East Asian men, with pale skin and dark hair, that could resemble their favorite kpop star or anime love interest. This is of course objectification too, but it brings another problem : other asians such as south asians, south east asians, west asians, are not looked at as “real asians” anymore, thus they become less desirable in their eyes. For them, Korean, Chinese and Japanese people are the only real asians. This is an infinite and tough vicious circle that needs to be broken.
Now that we understand more about how racial biases play a part in dating preferences, I hope we can look at ourselves and change any unfair mentality we could have.
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