Asian beauty standards for me
Click to viewThis was an interesting watch/listen/read - whether from a learning Chinese-language perspective or a cultural perspective - there are both English and simplified Chinese subtitles. The guy in the video speaks Mandarin at a very nice pace and very clearly.
It's talking about different beauty standards and how by modern Chinese standards, Simu Liu, the guy who plays Shang Chi in the recent marvel movie is considered 'ugly' / 'not good looking'. Asian countries have always preferred the large-eyed, double-lidded Western look for female eyes. This has now extended to the men, too I guess. Not surprisingly, the Chinese also seem to have embraced the Japanese/Korean pop idol / movie star look - which is a very pale, delicate, large-eyed, cosmetic-wearing look. It's hard to find non-offensive/binary/gender normative ways to describe it but essentially the current idealised masculine beauty seems to resemble what we would traditionally described as girlish, delicate and feminine. Check out the video to see it.
In contrast, as the guy in the youtube video mentions, Simu Liu, a Canadian Chinese actor is pretty hearty and sturdy looking. He's not massively tall - doesn't reach six foot, but he's not slight and delicate. I agree with the youtube host that he looks like a pretty typical Northern Chinese man. Based on interviews, he seems to be pretty extroverted, chatty and humorous rather than pale, delicate and mysterious. Realistically speaking, I wonder how many Chinese women would actually want to marry and live with a pale, delicate, moody and mysterious man whose daily beauty regimen probably overshadows theirs - but that's a different matter.
I think it's interesting that pale skin and large eyes seems to have pretty much always been in favour in Asia. It's for this reason why a lot of Asians don't Lucy Liu attractive - her eyes are too small and narrow and her eyes are single-lidded.
In the West, we've definitely had times where tanned skin was in and considered healthy rather than low and coarse. The large eyes thing is very interesting because while large, round eyes have definitely been mostly considered popular in the West (see the trend of Disney princesses with their wide child-like eyes) - there are many models and actresses who are considered beautiful who have, what I would consider, narrow eyes. There have been periods through western history when men were more dressed up, wore more make-up than the women and wore corsets. From memory, men were the first ones to wear high heels. Body size is another thing - through different periods in history, fuller bodied women were preferred to more slender etc and this preference has fluctuated through the ages.
Finally, the video is a bit funny because it's a quasi language lesson in Chinese but some of the words he uses in his translation make me laugh. He uses the Chinese word 胸 xiong which means cheset/breast/bosom but he translates it into English as "boobies..." :D I wonder that no one has called him out for it.