But...but...you have beautiful features and skin. I would never look at you and say, "Ugh!"
That, I know, has no bearing on our internalized perceptions of ourselves.
Then again, I also have "squinty" eyes (to quote my birth mother, who is very disturbed by them) and The Jowls of Doom even when I'm a size 4, and the naturally bushy eyebrows to boot...so...I wouldn't be likely to find those horrifying on anyone else. I've spent some time learning not to hate them on myself.
As far as I know, my background is pure Russian on my mother's side, but we're a little sketchy on my father, whom at various times my mother has told me was English, Irish, or Scottish and has referred vaguely to "having something squinty around his father's eyes," so who the heck knows where the phenotype comes from. We cover it by referring to the probably of Mongolians at the Russian border. But two families who've both been in what is now the US for 300 years are bound to have mixed it up somewhere, no matter how stiffly they argue the "purity" of their lineage. (Which is why my distinctly gold-toned skin and tilted eyes bother them so much.)
Racism. I understand, I think, where it comes from in an evolutionary sense, but what an idiotic thing for us to still be dragging around.
no subject
That, I know, has no bearing on our internalized perceptions of ourselves.
Then again, I also have "squinty" eyes (to quote my birth mother, who is very disturbed by them) and The Jowls of Doom even when I'm a size 4, and the naturally bushy eyebrows to boot...so...I wouldn't be likely to find those horrifying on anyone else. I've spent some time learning not to hate them on myself.
As far as I know, my background is pure Russian on my mother's side, but we're a little sketchy on my father, whom at various times my mother has told me was English, Irish, or Scottish and has referred vaguely to "having something squinty around his father's eyes," so who the heck knows where the phenotype comes from. We cover it by referring to the probably of Mongolians at the Russian border. But two families who've both been in what is now the US for 300 years are bound to have mixed it up somewhere, no matter how stiffly they argue the "purity" of their lineage. (Which is why my distinctly gold-toned skin and tilted eyes bother them so much.)
Racism. I understand, I think, where it comes from in an evolutionary sense, but what an idiotic thing for us to still be dragging around.