Quick Note on…Attraction, Beauty, Racism?

My sisters and I sat in the living room, rattling off male celebrities we found attractive. This rambling somehow managed to organize in terms of race. We listed out white men we thought handsome, then black guys. The second list sort of came up shorter, and apparently my sisters and I have a preference for mixed guys with pretty eyes. I think there simply aren’t enough celebrities of different ethnicities for us to really come up with too many names. 

Then for humour, we rambled off (again by race) unattractive male celebrities. And it was at this point my sister claimed there were no unattractive white guys: “They don’t exist!” And that statement made me uneasy for whatever reason. I think this is because I felt she was saying that the men were handsome not for their features, like eye color or hair or height or any combination of qualities that would chalk up to attractiveness. She was basically saying “White guys are all handsome with no exceptions.” And this was such a strange thing to hear and as adamantly as I tried to argue, I couldn’t counter with an example of one celebrity that we could all agree was undesirable.

(My sister is clearly going to have pale biracial children. That’s what is going to happen.)

I’ve been pondering attraction lately, what I “like” versus not, and so on. It’s an interesting thing to look into. I’m a huge advocate of interracial dating, probably because it accounts for my existence and also, I live in New York, where I’m big on options.

I cannot help but recall at times a huge debate held on Tumblr a while back along the lines of things like “I don’t usually like [insert race/ethnicity here[ but…” do not count as preference, but racism. I, being guilty of such statements, tried to wrap my head around that idea. I don’t know. I kind of just find everyone (i.e., all variations of people) attractive physically. And lately groups that I considered “generally not my type but there are exceptions” are becoming less of exceptions and more of just typical. 

I’m rambling. Sorry.

Basically it’s weird to know that my sisters can have really odd ideals on beauty and I don’t know what’s really shaped their aesthetic opinions on who’s good looking and who isn’t. We didn’t even mention women. I think the deeper question is just, what influences who we’re attracted to? I know things like “eurocentric beauty ideals” and “television” are top answers. But are they really? 

I’m going to think about this for a long time, I guess. And come back with an answer later.

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