beauty standards

[goldnlocket]

I noticed that the Filipino media tends to emphasize on light skin as the ideal beauty for the country. If a filipina/filipino has dark skin, does that automically mean they're unattractive? What features must one have to be considered beautiful?

Comments

[khall]

I like Filipinas, I never notice the lightness or darkness of their skin tone.

K.

[applewonders]

I think it's that way with a lot of Asian countries. I mean, even here in America, light-skinned black people are found to be more attractive than their fellow dark-skinned African-American people.

What I don't understand is how white people want to be dark? Geeze.

[eun_hye1]

and all those beauty products and paid ads! no wonder a lot of morenas are hellbent on bleaching their skins, be it with papaya soaps or those horrendous "skin peeling" products like the one Marian Rivera endorses. Ngayon naman, we have all these billboards about gluthathione or something which needs to be ingested(!) in order to get that much coveted pale pallor. :(

Culture, yes. Commercialism too.

[teefers]

no, it does not automatically mean that. the measurement of beauty has a lot more to do with the symmetry of one's facial features than their skin color. you might want to read this book as it references lots of scientific studies on beauty and the perception of beauty:

Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty
http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Prettiest-Science-Nancy-Etcoff/dp/0385479425

[maldito]

That's colonial mentality, prevalent among countries that have been colonized. That's where the colonizers have managed in one way or another to give the impression that they are the standard of a model citizen. So the colonized will mimic them in any way possible.

Any feature can be beautiful. But colonized people have already emulated that idea that only one style, that style that the model citizen should look like is what was ingrained into society, that particular society since contact with people from another part of the globe.

Yet at the same time you can see pale complected people, the ones many may emulate themselves after, do the opposite of what these people (Filipinos, etc.) do, by getting tans, sometimes darkening their hair, learning their culture, language, etc.