Beauty Standards and Self Hatred

[Raptorsin7]

Hey I'm curious to hear opinions about my situation and create a discussion around beauty standards and how it affects people of color or people who don't fit into the conventional standards of beauty.

I'm an Indian male and for as long as I can I remember I've always found woman of other races more desirable than woman of my own race. Over time I'd found more and more Indian woman I found attractive, but when I fantasize about a potential partner I feel a repulsion to Indian woman. When I see a very attractive Chinese/European/Spanish etc I find it easy to imagine an awesome loving relationship. When I was younger I was very insecure about my looks and thought I was ugly, but I overcame that too some extent and now I think I'm pretty attractive and could be with whoever I want, and i think the rise in my own self esteem led to me find more indian woman attractive, but still there is some block. 

I think the root of this is an underlying self hatred from growing up an ethnic minority in a western country, but I wonder if there's more going on too that i'm unaware of. My parents also have unloving relationship (arranged marriage) and woman in my family as very conservative and I have an underlying resentment for most, if not all, my female relatives. 

Sometimes I wonder if I should just accept my preference and count myself lucky I live in an open society that allows me to date whoever I want. I could see myself being in a happy relationship with a woman of a different ethnicity, but part of me does worry about being labeled as a self hating person who dates out of their race due to feeling inferior. My hope is to deal with the underlying self hatred and then see what remains of my dating preference. But how much can preference change? 

For example I find loud, large, masculine woman very unattractive, the same way a woman in Korea might find dark skin indian men very unattractive, who's to say that isn't right and each person is entitled to their own preference?

I feel very fortunate that I live in the West and not Asia so my ethnicity and skin color aren't major detriments. I've heard stories of Indian men in Japan/Korea who are viewed very negatively given the preference for light skin. It's a bitter irony but I do feel a resentment towards those cultures for having a negative view of my people, but then i also recognize my own dating prejudices and laugh haha. 

Any other thoughts?

[karkaore]

58 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

But how much can preference change?

I'm a straight male. Been all my life. I was living with a male friend at one point in my life. I remember coming back to our place after me going on a mini retreat to my village. After I returned to our place, I smoked some weed and sat down on a couch to meditate. He came into the room, sat down next to me and eventually we started talking. Love poured over me, I was in shock. I wanted to tell him I love him and kiss him. I didn't though. He is into consciousness work as well. I could tell that he felt it too.

Preferences can change dramatically depending on your consciousness level.

[Raptorsin7]

@karkaore Very cool. One of my friends told me a story about how he woke just radiating love and when he went to work he felt like kissing everyone haha, but he knew he had to check himself, he was also into consciousness work.

 

[Raptorsin7]

Also,

Do non-ethnic minority people ever think about this stuff when it comes to dating? I think if I weren't a minority I probably wouldn't even consider this, maybe that's why white people are more likely to date outside their race. It seems like the dominant cultural group would be the least likely to care, but it's also possible that dating interracially carries a stigma in a person's social group.

 

12 minutes ago, karkaore said:

Preferences can change dramatically depending on your consciousness level.

Part of me doesn't want to let go of my attractive preference. I remember thinking wouldn't it be great if I found ugly woman incredibly attractive too, but I had some resistance to the idea.

I do think it's possible to just view everything as amazing and beautiful though. I think about tv shows/animes where the artists can make everyone good looking. Humans are the same, we just have a bunch of beliefs and conditions around beauty.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Raptorsin7

[karkaore]

That's perfectly understandable. I didn't want to let go of my "straightness" so I couldn't express myself. Which is OK. If I would to go into it further, the fact that I didn't express myself is a good thing in a way. Our relationship would have changed for good if I did. These situations are full of nuances.

[Raptorsin7]

@karkaore Have you found your abilities increase too as your consciousness. Have you found yourself more coordinated, intelligent, creative, athletic?

 

[karkaore]

15 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@karkaore Have you found your abilities increase too as your consciousness. Have you found yourself more coordinated, intelligent, creative, athletic?

 

Doing this work have definitely improved me in all areas of life. My mind works in mysterious ways, I can't fully understand it.

Consciousness = clarity = understanding = abilities

[karkaore]

31 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

 Part of me doesn't want to let go of my attractive preference.

Don't make a problem out of it. Your preference is what you prefer!

[karkaore]

44 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Do non-ethnic minority people ever think about this stuff when it comes to dating?

When you say "think about this stuff" you mean do they share the same insecurities you do?

[Raptorsin7]

@karkaore No i mean think about dating interracially and the beauty/cultural standards associated with it. Some people may have never thought about this, whereas others may be more sensitive to this fact and it may influence how they date

[karkaore]

The smaller our own bubbles, the narrower view on things overall. So when people never really find their values, they don't give a shit about beauty or cultures.

I can't really relate to "interracial dating". To illustrate: I want to travel the world and by doing that I am open to finding the one for me. Do I care if she's black, yellow or white? Not really. Do I care if she's from Asia or Africa? Nope. I am not saying I don't have beauty standards, I do. I just don't understand what is up with the racial thing.

Maybe you want to give it a try explaining? Isn't there just dating?

[Preety_India]

Ok time to relate my own experience. 

I'm an Indian woman. I have low preferences for Indian men in general. This has nothing to do with their skin color or attraction. My first boyfriend was Indian. It was a bad experience because he was disrespectful. Very imposing, overbearing, hypercritical, no respect for boundaries, never ready to listen or give space to my feelings, very authoritarian  never protective, greedy etc. 

I thought that this was just one experience and so I didn't want to give up.  I tried again. It was my next boyfriend who was Indian as well.  He was very nice and sweet in the beginning but turned out to be extremely controlling, jealous of my success and achievements, always critical and possessive, bordering on obsession.  He literally turned into a stalker. So I had to break up. Both men were better than average in the looks department. But that wasn't the attraction factor and it didn't matter. I was attracted to how they presented themselves initially. 

The issues that I faced with Indian men is - they have a deep hate towards Indian women in general, they tend to hide this hate, but don't confront it,  there is a certain degree of internal misogyny in Indian men especially towards women of their own culture and it seems this has to do with the Indian social structure which is very Orthodox and Patriarchal and sees men as all powerful and women as an accessory to men who do not have an identity outside of being someone's wife or daughter. This mentality to see the women as a second class entity makes them look at Indian women with a condescending attitude of contempt rather than admiration,  as though Indian women aren't deserving of respect, love and attention. I see many Indian families where the wife/mother has to eat everyone's leftovers.  Indian women are regarded in great honor if they devalue themselves. The moment she tries to be confident, she is looked at with disgust. This attitude creates a lot of hate and resistance in Indian men against Indian women. So even  if an Indian woman is trying to do her best and is successful, she is still resented by Indian men. Which is quite unfortunate. It's as though nothing she does will ever make her look good in an Indian man's eyes. 

I have received compliments from Western men, but hardly ever from Indian men and that makes me very uncomfortable, as though I'm not accepted by my own men, my own men consider me inferior despite me trying my best. 

I think the problem with the Indian man is that he considers the Indian woman as very inferior and as a result does not give her respect, or has a hard time respecting her. He values himself far above her and because of his pride, he is unable to consider her worthy enough. And so when an Indian woman is successful or good looking or being good at something, he simply cannot accept it, his ego and pride are hurt by the fact that she has proved that she is worthy enough, yet he cannot give her that sense of satisfaction because it is in direct conflict with his inferior opinion of her. He immediately feels threatened or insecure and goes into this fascist controlling authoritarian mode where he starts to nitpick at his Indian  girlfriend for every little thing and control her so that he can always have a superior position over her. 

In the end after going through too much hassle with the Indian boyfriend, I decided to completely give up on Indian men and not date them at all because it was too much stress and little affection. Stress coming from their insecurities and need to control even little things. 

In my opinion, a lot of Indian men either consider an Indian woman as ugly, if she is dark skinned and if they don't find her ugly then they see her as a threat. It's as if beauty is a curse for an Indian woman. Because even if she is attractive, he will still find some fault in her, just to put her down. 

I dated American men, white men in general after  those two Indian  experiences. And they were quite respectful.  However one was abusive and things didn't pan out for other reasons. 

Even now I will never date an Indian man in my life again. This has nothing to do with their looks or attractiveness. Of course there are many Indian men that I have found attractive. 

But it's not the looks. It's the Indian man's attitude towards women, especially towards Indian women that sucks big time. 

If my Indian ex boyfriends had a  respectful attitude towards me where they were  not excessively trying to put me down or being unsupportive, I would have gladly married them. There were no other issues except the hurtful attitude and mentality 

 

Indian men need a serious wake up call and attitude change, especially their hateful attitudes towards Indian women, it's hard to deal with, it always shows up in their prejudice towards Indian women. It's hard to swallow because it makes me harder to respect Indian men. 

I mean respect will only come when respect is given.

Why will I care what Indian men think or why will I even pay attention to them if they are not going to respect me anyway.

Indian men freak out if they see an Indian woman not giving them attention. But  they forget to check their own attitude towards their own women. 

You love someone and they will love you back 

If you hate Indian women and have always been hating them, then you shouldn't be surprised if an Indian woman gives you differential treatment or is biased towards you. 

I have seen  several Indian women and they will simply look into their phones and not even pay attention to an Indian guy passing by. I mean that doesn't surprise me because women tend to react based on how they are treated. 

 

[Raptorsin7]

@Preety_India Yeah I resonate with a lot of what you wrote. I think i'm guilty of a lot of the charges against Indian men in general as well. I know for a fact I have deep seated hatred towards my mother and a lot towards my grandma too, who I grew up with, as sad/strange as it is I'd say if there's one person I truly have hatred for on this earth it's my mother.

I wonder if I can resolve my hate towards my mother and grandma how that will change my dating preferences