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友告诉我，长沙以美女著称。然而不同文化有不同的审美标准，我眼中的中国美女和中国人眼中的美女可大不一样。一头飘逸的黑色直发、深色皮肤、小眼睛单眼皮对我来说魅力无穷。很简单，人都会向往自己无法拥有的东西，我一头浅色卷发。在西方国家，尽管大家知道暴晒不利于健康，而且可能导致皮肤癌，但还是喜欢深色皮肤。在加拿大，每年都有很多女性大把花钱把肤色变深，而中国女性则热衷于美白。小眼睛、单眼皮很迷人，可中国女性想方设法要变成双眼皮。 当然，还有更重要的东西，我相信这也是各种文化的共性：如果一个女孩子有热情灿烂的微笑，有张充满灵气的脸，还有双熠熠生辉的眼睛，那她一定是最美的。
It's Summer, and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love . . . or so the saying goes. And why not? What could be more pleasing than scores of pretty boys and girls walking hand in hand a-long the Xiang river?
But what is pretty? You and I grew up in vastly different cultures, breathing different air and looking at different faces - do we have different ideas about what makes a person beautiful?
People tell me Changsha is known for its beauties. Is that true if we have different ideas of beauties? You decide. Here are some of things I list off when asked what I find attractive in a Chi-nese girl. You may be surprised.
1 - long, straight, black hair. This one's easy. As people, we tend to value what we don't have. My hair is short, light and curly. That perfectly straight, perfectly black Chinese hair may be com-monplace for you, but for me it's wonderfully strange.
2 - dark skin. Oh yes. This is a cultural differ-ence, pure and simple. In Western countries, even though we know it's un-healthy and it leads to skin cancer, we still love the look of someone who's been out in the sun. In fact, every year in my country, women spend more money to make their skin dark than Chinese women spend to make theirs white. Go figure.
3 - small eyes. That's right, you heard me - small eyes. Preferably with the epicanthic fold - that bit of skin over the eyelid that East Asian people alone have. Why? Why do I find attractive all these things that girls here spend so much mon-ey and time to get rid of?
One word: exotic. All of these things were very rare to see where and when I grew up. When something's rare it be-comes valuable. These features might be boring to you, but to me they mean romance and far-away places, just as my commonplace blue eyes and curly get so much attention here. We value what we don't see every day.
That being said, this list is not written in stone. There are some things I value much higher than all of these, and I'm sure these things cross our cultures. Really, I find there is nothing more at-tractive than a girl with a warm, open smile, an in-telligent face, and a bit of a twinkle in her eye. |
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Post at 2010-3-11 22:40
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Post at 2010-3-16 05:36
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