The current model in popular culture of the sylph can be seen in someone like Anne Hathaway.
(*Actually, I meant to use Natalie Portman as the example.)
Quiet, kind-of small and with soft features.
This is why many men seem to have a fetish with petite Asian women.
Most Asian women portrayed in the media fit this mold.
Why? Because for many men they are their ideal image of femininity.
They fit the equation; Feminine=Small.
But the understanding of what it is to be feminine varies based on what one has come learn as their culture's ideal.
Race seems to play little role when someone meets the qualifications of an ideal in femininity.
Then we go to a taller and more balanced look of someone like Halle Berry,
These women fit the video game model of the perfect female form.
Taller, tighter, more athletic with a perfectly proportional shape.
This seems to be the current media fixation concerning what it means to be feminine.
Then we get to the Vida Guerra,
Coco,
These women have so much body that their facial features become non-important.
This exponential sexuality is favored by most ethnic men.
This exponential sexuality is favored by most ethnic men.
(But it is making inroads into the Psyche of today's popular culture.)
This hyper-sexuality is (for many) the perfect definition of femininity.
Since they have more body - they must be more feminine.
But men are not the only gender to play this game.
Many people like to say that light skinned brotha's were played out back with...
But this is only partially true.
Vin Diesel, The Rock and Boris (something... that dude from Soul Food.) are examples of non-feminine light skinned brotha's who get much love from many sista's.
Light skinned brotha's didn't go out of style.
Feminine light skinned brotha's went out of style.
So when a guy says that this woman or another is fine, baad or just takes a short gasp in front of his woman - what he is really saying is that that woman is the ideal that he has come to understand as the perfect feminine form.
It's not a cerebral response - it's visceral.
She doesn't have to be pretty, smart, nice or anything else - she just fits what he views as approaching perfection within his standards of feminine beauty.
Dood, they list Anne Hathaway as 5'8" going back to when she was a teenager.
ReplyDeleteShe's now 5'10" if'n she's an inch. That's a whole lotta Rosie brah....,
(my wife is 5'11" and I've always been drawn to tall women)
I'm looking forward to your next post about how the white man has in fact "stolen" THE elusive "ideal woman". You can even use my real name if you like.
ReplyDeleteMan, if only my wife read this blog. That line had to worth some serious brownie points.
@ SeeNew - Really? Anne is that tall? I thought she was a petite little girl.
ReplyDelete(I guess she doesn't qualify as a sylph)
@ brohammas - Nah, it's cyclical and cultural. Just look at the old school paintings of women.