“Western guys date the ugliest Taiwanese girls!” a Taiwanese guy said to me recently.
I see plenty of western guys with their Taiwanese girlfriends and wives in Taipei, and honestly I think they are very pretty. Ugly? No way!
I was shocked by this unkind remark.
I’ve heard other Taiwanese people make similar comments before. So I had to explore this.
“Why do you think western guys date “ugly” women?” I asked out of curiosity.
His reply was, “Because they are easy to get.”
I shook my head in disagreement. “I think what is going on here, is merely a cultural difference. Those western guys don’t think their girlfriends are ugly. I don’t think they are ugly.”
I grabbed my phone to prove my point. A Google image search turned up hundreds of photos of attractive Asian women. I asked my Taiwanese friend if he thought they were beautiful.
“What about her?”
“Ugly.”
“What about her?”
“Totally ugly.”
“And her?”
“She’s okay.”
“I think they are all really beautiful.”
“What! Are you serious?”
“Yes!”
In Taiwan, I’m learning about the relatively narrow range of female beauty. Big eyes, skinny legs, freckle-free, white skin and goose egg shaped faces are all critical factors in determining a woman’s beauty.
Western guys from countries with an ample mix of ethnicities such at the United States tend to have a much broader range of aesthetic preferences.
It doesn’t surprise me that western men living in Taiwan are often attracted to women with “Asian” looking features.
Western men are not specifically seeking high, protruding noses, big, round eyes, and white skin when dating Taiwanese women.
Western guys tend to prefer Asian women that look “Asian.” Classic, narrow eyes are considered charming and desirable.
A western man will notice a woman’s hair, her smile, her attitude, her body… But he will probably not care much about the shape of her nose, how white her skin is, or how much her jawline flares.
A few idioms in English that spring to mind when thinking about this are:
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is subjective and different people have different preferences and definitions of beauty.
- Beauty is only skin deep. Good looks eventually fade, and are not reflective of a person’s inner-self, character and personality.
- One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. A quality that is undesirable to one person can be precious to another.