Open Thread: Black Women are less physically attractive than other women.

While breaking out the average attractiveness of one race over another is misguided and wrong on so many levels I don’t think we need to debate if they are right or not, I’m actually more hung up on the initial link that “proves” women are more attractive then men.

How can you statistically “prove” anything biological that is basically sociological in nature? If we are all up in arms about how one race is supposed to be uglier than the other, how can we take seriously a statement that claims the same thing about gender? I’m willing to believe that our socialization is more generous to one gender than the other but assuming societal norms equate to “truth” has historically worked out to be a pretty bad idea.

Soooooo, black women are less attractive than other women because they’re more like men. Okay, I need to crawl back into bed now.

First of all, men? freaking lovely. Bisexual woman here, and men and women are equally beautiful/sexy, so being more masculine wouldn’t have any effect. Second of all, there are plenty of non-black bull dykes in the world who are plenty masculine, thanks. Who wants to bet that the women in the photographs for judging the attractiveness for both were disproportionately prettier than the average bear, made up, and presented attractively, while the men were average and presented in a way not designed to signal attractiveness? And I’m going to bet that they picked examples of less stereotypically beautiful black women as well, even leaving aside the fact that our stereotype of beauty includes whiteness.

Next, let’s parse this idea that black women on average are more masculine on average than women of other races. There’s the long standing racist idea that blacks are more animalistic than other races, especially white people. We also have this demented idea that men are more animalistic/have stronger urges than women, who might be emotional, but certainly not lustful or gluttonous, no sir. Black women have also, from back in the slave days been stereotyped as oversexed. Like men. Only difference is that in men, it’s a reason for society to indulge them, and in black women, it’s a reason for society to castigate them. And neither have anything to do with biological fact, thanks. For gender, the stereotype keeps flipping. Before the Victorians, it was we oversexed ladies who had to be controlled. For race, remember the animalistic Vikings and the peaceful modern Swedes?

And they never even considered that maybe the reason black men are seen as so attractive, is because our culture feels more comfortable with objectifying them in the same way as women? And also, men in general are ugly because of testosterone, but black men are attractive because of testosterone? their logic has broken my ladybrain. And what the hell was the point of sticking the “(net of intelligence)” part in there except to imply that A) black men are stupider than white men, and B) women care about intelligence and not looks?

I’m kind of amazed that they managed to be so simultaneously racist and sexist. It’s such a perfect example of intersectionality that I should frame it. Or maybe make it its own bingo card.

Maria,

Reading the article only makes it worse. So not only are black women ugly, but they’re deluded about it.

Their “women are more attractive” theory fails mathematically as well as in sociologically. Each female child gets half of her genetic material from her father, so there is no generation-by-generation increase in female prettinesss predicted by this theory at all.

(I note in passing that not only is Psychology Today not peer reviewed, it is not considered a scholarly journal in academic circles and as such I’m not amazed to find one of their writers talking nonsense.)

Um….

What?

That XX sperms carry prettier genes than XY?

If I might nitpick, sperm are just X or Y. The other X comes from the egg.

Otherwise, I share the general mix of befuddlement and outrage at the whole article.

This article IS from the nineteenth century, right? Because IIRC, that’s when “scientific racism” really took off. And that’s exactly what this is.

I want to quote every freaking comment for truth. I do have one eensy nit to pick re: birthrates of boys & girls. More male fetuses are conceived than female, perhaps due to carrying less load, and male fetuses are more likely to miscarry. However, generally, more boys are born anyway than girls, at a ratio of about 1.05:1. (The trend of men being more prone to early death continues through childhood, and indeed, through life.)

My first reaction to this article is: wut. It doesn’t even make sense! It seems clear however that this researcher has based his career on being a troll, and this is the very essence of trolling. I have to believe that this article was not published in good faith; either that it was published without permission of the editors or that they meant to stir up a shitstorm. I’m leaning towards them wanting to stir up publicity and controversy. Even people who are comfortable with the status quo would see through this. (Not all of them, but I think a significant number!)