Quote Originally Posted by witeowl View Post
Maybe she just had a personal preference. Why do we always read so much into these things? My (step)sister would lay out and tan her naturally dark skin. (She said that, without enough sun, her skin would look "pisswater yellow". Her skin always looked lovely to me, but I was just jealous because I have this easily-burned, nearly-never-tanned German skin.)

I'm not sure that racism plays much of a factor in the Semenya issue... if a white girl looked that masculine, I think there's be an issue about it as well... however, maybe they would have been more discrete about it - it is way easier to pick on a poor south african girl than a german or american athlete. Having just looked up Eva Klobukowska, it looks like her case was found through mandatory genetic screening at that time in the olympics and it wasn't because of her amazing running ability that made people question whether she was male. But not having ever been black, but having dated someone who was - I'm fully aware that my view of the world and how I'm treated by the world is much much different from the reality of how they are treated by the world.

Okay, complete tangent, but claiming that it's not always about race and ignoring such issues really doesn't make them go away. The fact that america has a black president doesn't mean that we don't have a huge number of racists.

No, if you go all over asia, there's a definite preference for white skin and western eyes. Farm workers & poor people get tans, light skin means you don't have to do menial labor. Go through Vietnam, and you will see all the women riding bikes and motorbikes in big brimmed hats with gloves that stretch up to their shoulders and long pants.

I'm half Vietnamese... The vast majority of my mother's vietnamese friends have had breast implants, their noses done to get a prominent bridge like westerners, their eyes cut to get a western fold, whatever it is done to get their cheekbones more western, and then their hair streaked lighter. They all look like this carbon copy charicature of each other... They also all do anything and everything to keep out of the sun. Holding parasols, whatever.

Look at Asian rockstars/superstars/models/tv stars... most of them are fairly western looking. I took some facebook quiz the other day where you were supposed to guess whether people in photos were korean, chinese, japanese, or vietnamese... They were using photos of singers or tv stars and seriously, I couldn't tell the difference on most of them because their features were so western, either by mixed breeding or plastic surgery. Look at anime cartoons... the characters while asian, are still western looking in features.

When I've traveled in Asia, I get a lot of comments - looking vaguely asian, but having western features... I got stopped innumerable times in China with people saying "Where are you from? You look chinese, but your eyes are so beautiful" It is really really sad that so many asians cannot realize that their eyes are pretty as they are. In vietnam, I heard a lot of "fat beautiful" comments... Yes, there's an actual word for fat = beautiful in Vietnamese, because basically only the rich people could afford to have excess fat.

If you travel through South America or Latin America, you will see the same preference for lighter skin.... the indigenous populations (more native indian) and those with darker skin are looked down upon and discriminated against.