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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28156 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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Gal Gadot has a very similar body, i.e. very flat, no?. She also has a very similarly 'needs proper angle to be attractive' face. Gadot's side profile is awful, for instance. I was under the impression she was only considered so attractive because she expresses a lot of jewish phenotypic traits very attractively. Unlike someone like Natalie Portman who is very attractive but in a very gentile way.

Both Gadot and Portman look extremely Jewish. Actually Portman looks more Jewish, because Gadot could theoretically be like half-Greek, half-Levantine or perhaps even half-Balkan.

Hard disagree. Portman looks more jewish now in her older years, but young Portman doesn't look jewish at all.

This is Portman in 1999 when she was 18, she looks very Jewish to me.

The front of the nose a bit but on the sides I don't see it.

Many Ashkenazim have straight noses with no hump, it’s not actually a particularly Jewish trait. What European ethnicity do you think she looks like? If I met her (in the ‘99 picture) I’d assume immediately she was Jewish unless there was strong evidence to the contrary (like us being in a rural village in Austria, or her having a crucifix necklace).

Many Ashkenazim have the opposite of a straight nose with no hump. The collection of jewish facial features that make up what could be considered a jewish face are very much not on display on Portman. Especially in that sideshot. I'd assume she were Eastern-European. Slovenian or something.

I think Portman has a strong Eastern Med phenotype, although she could conceivably be Balkan or possibly (at a stretch) Iberian, maybe even Sicilian (and Sicilians tend to look phenotypically closest to the broadest cross-section of Ashkenazim). But in general Ashkenazim have an extremely diverse phenotype and I think her brows, jaw, nose (mostly), hair (color and natural texture) cheekbones code strongly as Ashkenazi. Again, I think people are too strongly wedded to the caricature, even if they don’t consciously try to be. A hooked or humped nose is one of the poorest predictors of Ashkenazi ethnicity; there are countless who don’t have either, and there are other ethnicities in which they’re both more common.

Ashkenazim being diverse has little bearing on whether or not Portman could be called 'jewish looking'. Since Portman's 'look' could be much rarer than other jewish 'looks' as well as not sharing many of the obvious tells that make the other 'looks' obviously jewish. Which is my impression.

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