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Different beauty standards strikes again. All three persons you listed…are solidly 3 in China.
Is there a website or something that lets Chinese/other EAsian and Americans/westerners score woman and man of different ethnicities? Fascinating..
I have a classmate who for many years has been considered by me a 2, basically a female but not a woman if I want to be mean (actually the moment I realized that I might be a school bully is when I remembered many years later how mean I was to her) and has never hooked up with anyone in China. Went to Germany and found a dude who looks like a Nazi poster boy. Beauty is in the eyes of beholder indeed.
I feel like China managing to withstand the obesity epidemic is also a decent part of this. Atleast walking around in China it feels like you don't see fat people as much. IMO in the West a lot of stuff around facecard-level attractiveness is pretty distorted by how many people are just fat and reshaped the bell curve as a result of it.
This is definitely a big part of it. I've met plenty of Chinese women, and very few were overweight. If you're using Tinder as intended (judging people solely based on their appearances) and you're forced to choose between an overweight Irishwoman and an average or slim Chinese woman, that's kind of a no-brainer even if you don't have a thing for Asian women.
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I believe there was a project to have people from different countries digitally edit photos to create the ideal woman. The Chinawoman looked like she was 12, the westerners were decidedly more voluptuous.
Note that Asian women (and men, to a lesser extent) tend to have naturally more neotenous facial features than Westerners anyway, as per the meme. My ex-girlfriend was Chinese and only one year younger than me, but invariably got asked for ID when buying beer, when both of us were in our late twenties (note that you only have to be eighteen to buy drink in Ireland). A few years ago I saw the film Decision to Leave which stars the Chinese actress Tang Wei. Based on this screengrab from the film's trailer, how old would you guess she was at the time of filming?
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Well I’m not sure if you’re good at estimating Chinese women’s age (I’m not with western women). I do think being voluptuous is nice, but that’s mostly aesthetics, and people are into all kinds of weird shit anyway.
My comment was not about their faces; it was that these ‘ideal girls’ were so skinny as to lack many of the, uh, development of features associated with physical maturity in women. Westerners just like their women a bit curvier on average even if that means they’re not quite as skinny.
Meyerlemon's mentioned a variant of this before, and I'm kinda interested in how representative it is (if at all). Because while I'm not a good judge of how westerners look at women, I would not expect any red-blooded male's first comment on Naomi Wu to be about her face.
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I think it's the same with Black women. Black men like "yellow bones", White men like really dark ones (I thought the term was "blue bones", but every search engine suddenly disagrees). Asian men like Asian women with disturbingly pale neotenous faces and round eyes, White men prefer them sallower and with more... tsurime eyes.
It’s shocking when I realized that westerners do like women we consider hideous, with high cheek bones and those eyes. I thought that’s some sort of humiliation ritual until I found out that they’re somewhat consistent on pornhub.
Yes, high cheekbones are attractive in the west. So is a physically larger woman than the Chinese prefer.
But are you sure that Asian porn doesn’t attract a crowd that likes yellow skin and slantey eyes?
Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Can’t tell either way, and you should know better than I do. Or not. I certainly don’t interact with enough Americans to say anything.
You have weird conceptions of China, being one of the only people who refer to us as chinaman on this website (a bit old fashioned, and if you don’t mean ill I don’t really mind). Maybe it’s due to the lack of interaction, which I understand.
I don’t think our people are physically smaller than yours, and judging by how latinized Americans are and will be, its surely favoring us.
America is still 60% white, and above 70% heritage American(blacks aren't that much smaller on average, except negritos which we don't have). Latin mestizos are short but rather... stout, there's a reason they do most of the heavy labor in America, and they make up most of the rest.
What's wrong with the term Chinaman? I know we don't say 'Mexicoman' or whatever, but we have lots of 'China buffet' and no 'Mexico restaurant', so it's at least consistent. I've never claimed to be fashionable. I kind of assume men looking for Asian porn specifically want women who look more... stereotypically Asiatic. It's probably a fetish. Otherwise why would they look for Asian porn? White women are more attractive(and Chinese beauty standards certainly seem to gesture in that direction).
"Chinaman" is historical usage that harkens back to the 19th century. It may not be a slur, exactly, but it's kind of like calling a black person a "Negro" - it is not plausible that you are unaware that it's no longer considered polite.
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No, America is already minority white, and the "official figures" that claim otherwise are deliberate lies.
I’m wondering what you’re basing this off, because most informed speculation is that ‘white’ as a social category underestimates thé percentage of phenotypically European cultural Americans.
First, as @OliveTapenade notes, the Census includes under "white" a lot of people who aren't. MENA, yes; but there's also a lot of "white" Hispanics who are actually mestizo.
Plus, the Census office themselves admit that they probably undercounted blacks and Hispanics while overcounting whites and Asians.
According to the Census numbers — if you believe any of them — there's about 191 million non-Hispanic whites, which, per the above, is almost certainly an overestimate.
But where the real issue lies is the denominator. They claim the total population is about 335 million — ≈321 citizens and legal residents, and ≈14 million illegal aliens.
But that last number is laughable; outright lies. Our new interim DHS secretary just admitted that about 20 million (at least) arrived under Biden alone. The actual number of illegals is at least 50 million, and probably closer to 100 million, for an actual population of 371-421 million. With that "191 million whites" figure (again, almost certain to actually be lower), that gives a percentage of 45-51%.
So, again, whites are almost certainly already a minority in the US.
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My understanding is that there's a case both ways?
On the one hand, 'white' in US census terms includes groups that are generally not considered white socially, in the US - most notably Middle Easterners are counted as white, and most Americans would not consider an Egyptian Muslim to be white. According to the census categories, an Afghan is white, and I think the popular use of race is different to that.
On the other hand, US racial categories tend to undercount whites otherwise. A person with one white parent and one black parent is counted as black. A person with three white grandparents and one black grandparent is counted as black. It's not literally a one-drop rule, but as a rule of thumb, if there is a mixture of any kind, it defaults to the non-white race.
This is also likely to be exaggerated by changing patterns of racial identification. To put it more simply, fifty years ago, if you could identify as white, you did, because that was more socially prestigious. Today, if you can identify as non-white, you probably identify as non-white, because now that's the most prestigious option. It isn't everywhere, but certainly in elite contexts, if you are otherwise-white-passing but have just enough of a distant family connection to claim to be black or Asian-American or Native American or ambiguously brown some other way, you probably do.
The census has changed as well - this relates to the above, but just by itself, the addition of multi-racial or mixed-race categories (now apparently 10.2% of the population) is going to depress other categories. It is thus possible for the racial categories on the census to change significantly even with the exact same population.
What is the 'real' white proportion of the US population? I don't know. It doesn't really have an objective answer, because the borders of the category 'white' are often shifting, and different people put those lines in different places. If you pressed me I'd guess that, broadly speaking, white people, are somewhere around 60-70% of the US population, and any answer more precise than that is going to require both stipulating a narrower definition of white (and good luck finding one with majority support) and collecting data that nobody has actually collected.
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Inflammatory claims require evidence.
What part of "the "official figures" that claim otherwise are deliberate lies" was unclear?
The 2020 Census is a pack of lies, and the Census Office is a bunch of politically-motivated propagandists who cannot be trusted.
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Honestly I don't know. It seems innocuous, but media and my liberal friends keep telling me it's not a good thing to be called Chinaman. Maybe for historical reasons but I'm not building railways and we have our country in order again, so why do I care. Granted they're quite sensitive with words and I personally don't mind harmless racism; it's endearing sometimes. I've encountered some, but at least from what I observed on my Transamerica trip, middle Americans are generally friendly and trustworthy people if a bit blunt, not the racist hillbillies my liberal circle usually insinuates through their jokes and chit chats. But what do I know? I'm not going to disagree with them on English.
I honestly don't think that look is stereotypically Chinese. Mongolians yes, Chinese northerners maybe but not really. At least not the non-malnourished Chinese.
Certainly white beauty standards spread to all corners of the world where there are things that can be called civilization. I'm sure our beauty standards are influenced to some extent, but as you noticed the slim anorexic neotenous look is not something Americans exported to us. You don't prefer that look anyway.
I don’t claim to be the expert on what Chinese/mongolian phenotypes are and how they contrast, but somebody looking for a Mongolian look searching ‘Chinese’ seems very, very believable to me, because they’re probably not the experts either.
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The problem is historical use of the word. The literal parse of the word doesn't matter.
The historical use of the word was to refer to men from China. It wasn't a slur any more than "Negro" is (though like that word and many others it can be used as one), it's just that any old-fashioned race word is automatically racist.
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It's important to note that "stereotypically Asian" is more than just weirdly-shaped eyes and
<del>yellow</del><ins>slightly-less-red</ins>skin. I think it's far from impossible that many Asian fetishists are just into skinny women, but they find that searching for Asian porn is a more surefire way to find skinny women than trying to use the search term "skinny".More options
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Can you give me an example of a woman who'd be considered a 10/10 in China?
Zhao Luisi of the current generation, and Michelle Reis (the girl on my pfp) are my favourites.
Just look up any dancing e-girls on douyin. Obviously they use many layers of plastic and filters, but it gives you an idea.
Side note: China's tiktok brainrot is really no better than ours!
We must have decidedly different tastes then. For me it's Ming-Na Wen and Michelle Yeoh (when she was younger). And Lexa Doig but she's half scotish/Philippine
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At the level of detail needed to tell an 8 from a 9 from a 10, I can't tell what those chicks look like because the Wikipedia infobox pictures are taken in soft focus. Is this normal for Chinese women in Chinese media?
IMDB has a few more photos and videos (1 2).
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Is it from a movie?
Yup. Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels.
Everyone gushes about In the Mood for Love. Myself and the missus tried watching it but found it painfully slow and ended up turning it off after about forty minutes. Maybe I should give it another try.
I'll tell you this much, if you (and especially the missus) find WKW's movies boring or unrelatable, that's probably a good thing. It's a good sign you're happy where you are and your relationship/marriage is healthy.
My wife and I liked In the Mood for Love a lot (less so Days of Being Wild and even less so 2046). I can assure you there's no problem though.
It's simply such an amazing vibe and mood. Also WKW's obvious penchant for ass is amusing.
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Not who you're responding to but Li Gong in her day was enormously popular.
Now she is stunning.
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She’s pretty, but I think she’s polished her look to be more appealing to Western audiences. Same with Zhang Ziyi.
What about the Japanese? Do they care for Chinese actresses? I feel like their tastes might overlap, but not be exactly the same. I know some Taiwanese actresses were or are popular.
As usual I have to insert that I cannot speak for Japan, but in my my experience Japanese don't make much commentary on Chinese models, actresses, etc. The same cannot be said about Koreans--meaning Koreans are regularly commented on as kirei or kawaii, or, since I am in Kansai, meccha kirei na hito. (Lit. very pretty person.) I guess there were some Taiwanese who were known --notably Vivian Tsu, though I haven't seen her around in years (probably because she's about 50 now and has no doubt had facial surgery which irrevocably altered the cute image she had in the 90s/2000s). Some women are probably part Chinese though, and just don't trumpet it over PR.
A side note: More buxom (by Asian standards) women are rarely top tier actresses or models here. They end up, in their brief career spans during youth, doing so-called "gravia" or semi nude books and calendars (グラビアアイドル is a term) or pornography. At times they transition to the mainstream (as in the late Ai Iijima) but that's almost unheard of.
The typical English transliteration is "gravure".
I probably knew that, thanks.
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Thank you. Obviously it’s not everybody, but I have a general feeling that the Japanese know very little about China, even less than your typical American, to a point I find genuinely irritating.
Part of it is the lack of cultural export, and the perception of us being (not necessarily incorrect) low class. Like their typical Chinese girl in anime still have that twin hair buns or wear Qipao and good at Kongfu or whatever, some century old stereotypes. Cultural inertia is another piece. But sometimes they're just oblivious enough to, for example, think obviously Chinese gacha games are made by Japanese companies. Really? Like freaking Arknights or whatever has a whole storyline built around Chinese-flavored characters and New Year events. It's right there. I mean they have people who know us really well, the old 漢學家 but I guess they’re on their way out.
Re the buxom women, I feel like they somehow associate bustiness with promiscuity (not sure, that’s a feeling through second hand cultural exposure), and it’s sad those models ended up where they are.
Well I don't know how sorry I feel for them. You can mourn a world where they feel that's their lot in life, but no one's twisting their arms (as far as I know) to take off their tops. It's lucrative in the short term and I think historically very much exposed the girl to abuse (from agents, scouts, management) as well as public ogling. In the sense that an unworldly or unsavvy young woman is duped (or drugged!) sure, it's too bad. It's potentially tragic. It's infuriating. But there's a naïvete that I find a bit cloying in certain girls, if it is naïvete at all--it might just be that they're disingenuous in the style of the burikko if you're familiar with that term. Add to that a certain different cultural approach to sex and it is what it is. Outright rape and abuse certainly does exist, though, and I suspect was more of a common routine in the past. If there's anything good about Post your own porn sites or camgirl type business, it's that to some degree the girls can have more control and not be gang raped on camera for ten grand or however much a pittance they have historically been paid.
Exceptions in my mind, or situations where I'd genuinely feel pity, are where the girl, due to her endowments and the sleaziness of those around her, was, at puberty, treated as a sexual plaything by a relative (fondled or worse) and internalized this pathologically. I've heard terrible stories.
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Also curious how big a regional skew there is to this. Based on my travels in China I'd say that the Northern provinces tend to produce a higher average attractiveness for both genders, but a lot of that's the height and relative sturdiness.
I think northerners tend to prefer people who are taller and more robust. Southerners from Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu also have noticeably different tastes from Cantonese. They favor the “小家碧玉” type, smaller, more delicate, with a neotenous look, while Cantonese tend to prefer the “miss hongkong” style like my example 4 and 6.
Beauty standards across the country are a lot less diverse now than they were maybe 20 or 10 years ago to many’s dismay, probably because of social media. Now everyone like neotenous faces and slim figures. Southern cultural hegemony and its consequences. It’s a familiar pattern in China with northern political/military dominance paired with southern cultural take over.
I've always found it funny that mainland Chinese always refer to Shanghai "southern", when from a geographic perspective it's near the geographic latitude median and if accounting for population density, probably north of that. At least in my experience, the people from places like Jiangsu, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou seem a lot more similar to people from Beijing than than to people from Guangdong.
That’s because when the Chinese empire divides (usually along the Yangtze River) the seats of major southern successor states are usually in the Yangtze Delta, almost never in the Pearl River Delta (except for Sun Yat-sen’s brief governance from Guangzhou, which reflect the shift of gravity within China in the late imperial era until now). The “southern dynasties” almost invariably choose to rule from Nanjing or Hangzhou. It’s customary to call that part of China “the south”, meaning mostly the region south of Yangtze.
Cantonese and Hokkien are more clannish and, yes, pretty easy to distinguish. But I do think northerners and the “southerners” in the Yangtze Delta are also easily distinguishable, from the way they look or accent or mannerism. One of those in-group sensitivity things I guess.
Isn't it usually along the Huai? That was the point of division for the Jin (晉) and the Sixteen Kingdoms, as well as the Southern Song and the Jin (金). This puts the entire Yangtze delta area unambiguously within the "South", rather than it being bisected by the Yangtze into North and South, at least if you follow the old course of the river before it became a Yangtze tributary.
(I realise I'm nitpicking and this comment is more being a pedant for the other commenters, as you clearly suggest that the Yangtze delta is "Southern" in another comment)
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Ah, I figured there must be a historic reason so I appreciate the added context. China is certainly not unique in this regard, considering the "Middle East" is in the western half of Eurasia and the "Midwest" is in the eastern half of the US.
So when Chinese say "southerners", are they referring to everyone from Shanghai to Hainan to Sichuan? If that's the case, are there real unifying cultural reasons or is this more of a definition by exclusion on the part of northerners to group "everyone that isn't us"?
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Still as a Westerner I'd say the Northerners are more likely to turn my head aesthetically. I did a jiujitsu tournament in Beijing and I was shocked at my division having good numbers at 100+ KG and big, beefy local Chinese. Admittedly mostly from Tianjin or further North than that but compared to the largely Southern overseas diaspora it was a pretty big shock to me.
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I had such a crush on her when I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers as a child. Still would today, honestly.
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Should’ve included in my post.
Here, voted by close to a million thirsty Chinese dudes on Hupu, a sports forum.
Exhibit 1
Exhibit 2
Exhibit 3
Exhibit 4
Exhibit 5
My personal favorite
I agree with the vote mostly.
I was considering maybe 咬人猫 but being a cosplay dancer might skew things to a certain demographic, and obviously everything would be super curated and choreographed.
You’re more online than me :( honestly they all look the same after the makeup…
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Agreed on 2, 3 and 6. I have noticed that Chinese men seem to favour a more androgynous look.
I once dated a woman from Taiwan who would be considered slim by Irish standards. She told me that, back home, the beauty standard is for women to be exceptionally thin and flat-chested, to the point that her classmates in secondary school teased and mocked her for her comparatively big boobs. (Needless to say, I wasn't complaining.)
I talk with a friend when visiting Shanghai - do women here have ass and boobs? His answer was short - we call them the runways because a plane can land on them without shaking.
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I do think our men and women look more alike than Westerners. Gender swapping has been a common plot line in Chinese novels and shows, going back more than a thousand years. The story of Mulan for example dates to around 400 AD and involves a woman serving in the army masquerading as a man.
God knows how much I hate that trend. I don’t understand why some Chinese men like that candlestick woman look. They’re already borderline anorexic, and still somehow “fat”? Screw that.
Oh well, I guess selection pressure will take care of their obsession with small pelvises and lack of breast milk…
It was my favourite Disney movie as a child, and probably a major contributing factor to my taste in women.
During Covid I binge-watched Silicon Valley, an American sitcom featuring a minor character played by Jimmy O. Yang. I took a screenshot of him and sent it to my brother with the caption "I think my thing for Asian women is getting out of hand, because he's kind of cute?" Obviously I meant it in jest, but if Yang were to troon out I do think he'd have a much easier time passing than most white men.
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I think even in East Asian reckoning Christine Fang is not that good looking?
Can’t speak to her looks, but she would be at least a year older
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I feel like these videos being 10 years old and largely being unposed photos which somebody's harvested as opposed to the linked girls having access to 2025 cosmetics and controlling their own online images insofar as what's posted also makes it hard to compare.
I feel like if I just go through my female high school classmates' photographs (and how they aged) a good double digit number at the very least would be prettier than her. She's, like, second quartile at best?
Some of it might also be the makeup. An ex of mine who was extremely pretty when you used East Asian makeup techniques and products, or hell, didn't use any makeup at all, looked shockingly bad when she got her makeup done by a Western professional.
School Photos? Facebook photos they've curated?
I'm not saying that she's secretly some 10/10 goddess I just think it's a bit of an unfair comparison between 'woman in random political candid photos' and social media girls who can aggressively curate their images
Nah, like, shitty photographs from banquets and such, reunion parties, the like. That and stuff like yearbook photographs. I don't stalk peoples' instagrams, not having one myself.
Half of them don't seem to curate their images at all anyway
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Yeah she’s mid but I’d say better than the three named in @FtttG’s post.
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