Female beauty

It is an almost worldwide  form of racism and I have commented on it a couple of times before: There is a largely wordwide ideal of beauty and that ideal is Nordic. A more "incorrect" thing to note would be hard to imagine but the facts of the matter are there. One cartoonist put it rather cruelly as under:



Even Mrs Obama clearly likes the Nordic look.  All she can do towards it is to straighten her normal "nappy" mop of hair but she regularly does that. Other than that she has no Nordic attributes at all.  If her skin were white she would be seen as ugly.  She has received acceptance for political reasons only

Like it or not, the de facto worldwide standard of female beauty is Nordic -- narrow faces, fine features, white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. Light brown hair instead of blond hair can squeak into the top standard and tanned white skin is OK but that is about the only variation accepted.

More on "narrow faces":

Something that seems very little noticed -- probably because it is a subtle difference -- is that narrow faces seem to trump wide faces.  Famous models and other women regarded as beautiful seem almost universally to have rather narrow faces



It's not a strong effect but it is remarkably common.

Russian women are well-known for beauty.  All billionaires seem to have one.  And narrow faces are notable there too.


Yana Ciganova


Inna Zobova

What about German women?  There are of course women there with narrow faces but I am inclined to think that Germany is in fact the home of wide faces.  The lady below is much esteemed in Germany but I think even her face is a trifle wide


lena gercke

But there are exceptions to every rule and the French girl who was once known as the most beautiful girl in the world has a rather wide face


Thylane Blondeau

The title of must beautiful girl in the world did not go uncontested however.  The entrant from Russia is below and she has a narrow face


Kristina Pimenova

It may be noted that blue eyes are preponderant above -- which is part of the Nordic pattern.  Blue eyes will always be well regarded but before the era of political correctness they were even more so.  They were said to be "treu", a German word meaning faithful, reliable, true, honest. See, for instance the song "Die ganze Welt ist himmelblau" in the operetta IM WEISSEN RÖSSL



So there is no doubt about how well people react to blue eyes.

And then there is blonde hair.  And high esteem for that goes back st least as far as Claudio Monteverdi, writing roughly 400 years ago.  His madrigal "Chiome d' oro" ("tresses of gold") in praise of a blonde lady is as devoted as you get.



We may deplore the Nordic standard but saying that people should adopt other standards for females that they like to look at is pissing into the wind.  It won't happen.  It will have zero influence.

An episode in my life highlighted the prestige of the Nordic look. When my son was about 18 months old, we took him to Lone Pine Koala park here in Brisbane so that we could all see the Koalas.  And a lot of Japanese people go to Lone Pine to see the Koalas too.  And they come with cameras at the ready.  So when Jenny was wheeling Joey along in his stroller, that came to the attention of the Japanese.  With his paper-white skin, emerald-blue eyes and golden-blond hair he looked like an angel to them.  So Joey was as much photographed as were the Koalas.

And something that Americans and Indians will find familiar has recently become big in South Africa:  Skin bleaching.  Even where the Nordic ideal of very white skin is not available, any approach to it is seen as prestigious.

Beauty and sexual attraction, however, are not coterminous.

The words of "Chiome d'oro can be found here in both English and the original Italian.

I can't find a translation of "Die ganze Welt is Himmelblau" so I give below my translation in interlinear form

Die ganze Welt ist himmelblau
The whole world is heaven blue
Wenn ich in Deine Augen schau'
If I look into your eyes

Und ich frag dabei: Bist auch Du so treu
And I ask then:  Are you really that true
Wie das Blau, wie das Blau Deiner Augen
Like the blue, like the blue of your eyes

Ein Blick nur in Dein Angesicht
Just one glance at your face
Und ringsum blüht Vergissmeinnicht
And all around forget-me-nots bloom

Ja, die ganze Welt machst Du schöne Frau
Yes you make the whole world, beautiful woman
So blau, so blau, so blau
So blue, so blue, so blue

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The Welfare State’s Legacy

That the problems of today’s black Americans are a result of a legacy of slavery, racial discrimination and poverty has achieved an axiomatic status, thought to be self-evident and beyond question. This is what academics and the civil rights establishment have taught. But as with so much of what’s claimed by leftists, there is little evidence to support it.

The No. 1 problem among blacks is the effects stemming from a very weak family structure. Children from fatherless homes are likelier to drop out of high school, die by suicide, have behavioral disorders, join gangs, commit crimes and end up in prison. They are also likelier to live in poverty-stricken households. But is the weak black family a legacy of slavery? In 1960, just 22 percent of black children were raised in single-parent families. Fifty years later, more than 70 percent of black children were raised in single-parent families. Here’s my question: Was the increase in single-parent black families after 1960 a legacy of slavery, or might it be a legacy of the welfare state ushered in by the War on Poverty?

According to the 1938 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, that year 11 percent of black children were born to unwed mothers. Today about 75 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. Is that supposed to be a delayed response to the legacy of slavery? The bottom line is that the black family was stronger the first 100 years after slavery than during what will be the second 100 years.

At one time, almost all black families were poor, regardless of whether one or both parents were present. Today roughly 30 percent of blacks are poor. However, two-parent black families are rarely poor. Only 8 percent of black married-couple families live in poverty. Among black families in which both the husband and wife work full time, the poverty rate is under 5 percent. Poverty in black families headed by single women is 37 percent. The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has.

The black family structure is not the only retrogression suffered by blacks in the age of racial enlightenment. In every census from 1890 to 1954, blacks were either just as active as or more so than whites in the labor market. During that earlier period, black teen unemployment was roughly equal to or less than white teen unemployment. As early as 1900, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites; today it’s about 30 percent longer. Would anyone suggest that during earlier periods, there was less racial discrimination? What goes a long way toward an explanation of yesteryear and today are the various labor laws and regulations promoted by liberals and their union allies that cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and encourage racial discrimination.

Labor unions have a long history of discrimination against blacks. Frederick Douglass wrote about this in his 1874 essay titled “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions,” and Booker T. Washington did so in his 1913 essay titled “The Negro and the Labor Unions.” To the detriment of their constituents, most of today’s black politicians give unquestioning support to labor laws pushed by unions and white liberal organizations.

Then there’s education. Many black 12th-graders deal with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade. They write and do math about as well as white seventh- and eighth-graders. All of this means that an employer hiring or a college admitting the typical black high school graduate is in effect hiring or admitting an eighth-grader. Thus, one should not be surprised by the outcomes.

The most damage done to black Americans is inflicted by those politicians, civil rights leaders and academics who assert that every problem confronting blacks is a result of a legacy of slavery and discrimination. That’s a vision that guarantees perpetuity for the problems.

SOURCE

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Leftist intolerance goes back a long way

Ray Joseph Cormier found out in 1976

While Americans celebrated their American Revolution, as a Canadian, I was having the best time of my life living in Venice Beach, California in the Spirit of ´76. It was my first winter in the warm sun in my lifetime. The Times and Winds of Change were favourable toward me since this unexpected Day.

At that time, Venice Beach was the self-proclaimed, last bastion of Freedom in the un-United States. The idea was anyone was Free to do anything, as long as there was no harm done to others, or diminished their equal rights.

I had a Free place to stay 1/2 block from the Ocean. I got lunch and supper for washing dishes for $1/hour at Suzanne's Kitchen on the boardwalk. For setting up the tables and chairs on the patio of the Sea And Shore Restaurant at 7am, I got a full breakfast, and could sit on the patio talking with anyone and everyone, with free coffee until closing.

One Day, I decided to test how real the right of Freedom of Speech was practised in Venice? Sitting on a bench on the Boardwalk with my back to the ocean, I started to read from the Bible in a very loud voice. It seemed as though the Wind from the sea carried the words so that they reverberated among the buildings and along the Beach.

Watching the passersby, there were so many comments to the effect, ¨You can´t do that here. Go some place else.¨ People actually covered their ears, saying ¨Stop that! Stop that!” It was appearing more and more, many people don´t practice what they preach or believe in Freedom of Speech except for their own.

Continuing to read, someone came up to me sitting on the bench and cracked an egg on my head! I was temporarily stunned as the yoke dripped down my hair and face, onto my shirt and the Bible in my hands. How to react? Should I stand up in the anger and wrath of God? Should I condemn him to Hell?

It took a few seconds, but recovering, I stood up and said,
¨Have you never read these words in this Book? Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -- Matthew 11:28-30    
                                                                           
 After that, others came and ministered to me.

As some of you have seen, I'm still dealing with that kind of attitude on this site these 41 years later.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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