Part 1 Of all the women you hav ever met, all the combinations of skin, hair, and eye color, which ones have you consistently been attracted to? For example, white and brunette, white and blonde, tan and brunetter, tan and red-haired, black and amber-eyed, etc... Part 2 Now, think about why you are attracted to them. Is it necessarily the race you are attracted to or the colors? I'm doing this because it made me think when a friend of mine who is somewhat Black, but not dark black changed her hair color to blonde and she said she gets more guys talking to her. Then I noticed that a lot of women seem to change their heads to blond and while I don't have any official numbers for this, I've personally seen more people change their hair to this color than anything else. At the same time, I have also known many White women to also attempt some for of skin-tanning. And, while not specific, I hav never known many people to change their eye-color from light to dark as much as they would dark to light. So, from my amatuer observations, it seems that a moderately tanned women- a very light shade of brown- with some color of light eyes and blonde hair is the ideal image women seem to move toward if they change or alter their appearance. And since this occurs in all races, I was thinking that it's not a racial thing. That, for some reason, as humans, we are more attracted to these bright colors. Women pick up on that and imitate it to make themselves more attractive in turn. Of course, Caucasian women and men are naturally these colors and there have been studies that show they are the most attractive people in the world on the basis of appearance, on average. (note: love and attractiveness are not the same thing. And attractiveness does not make one person consumately better than another person. It's a superficial trait, but nonetheless socially important in how we understand ourselves since we are...superficially motivated people) So...I'm looking for some truth here. On the basis of appearance alone, on average (i.e. not the best looking woman you ever saw, but on a consistent basis) what colow combinations are you more attracted to. This question goes for men and women.
Clearly, beauty is not at all about skin-/eye-/hair colour. Rather it is about mathematics and more precisely about symetrics. The more symetric a face is the more attractive the person. However people do have preferences and tend to prefer certain traits over others. In general I would say I tend to prefer the combination of light hair and dark eyes for no real reason at all. In general physical/sexual beauty is mostly- if not solely- about symetrics and therefore the symetric "black" face will be more beautiful than the more asymetric white face (for example). Although, in general, I myself tend not to be sexually attracted to people of colour.
White features are the most attractive. Light colored skin. Blond/red hair, blue/green eyes. No other race has this unless mixing has taken place at some point and it becomes a genetic rarity.
Researchers have done experiments and found that we are most attracted to those who look like us, but we should never dismiss the attraction to novelty.
Since I was a horny teen I've preferred dark complected brunettes with blue eyes so at least my preference tracks with yours although that may not be a universal trend. Otherwise, light skin and light eyes seem to be a world wide preference. That would explain how blue eyes, a rather recent (in terms of human evolution) mutation, spread so far and so fast. They don't confer any particular survival advantage, but there is a sex selection preference for them.
Ritter makes a good point about symmetry, but I think the reason why blondes and white people are perceived as more attractive can be traced back to the media and society. Despite some effort, we still live in a world where the top dogs of society (in whatever way) are predominantly white, and these cultural norms influence our attraction. However, the growing presence of tanned models, actors etc. may be behind the tanning trend in the West. I think there's some truth to the whole "attraction to people who look like you" thing, too. I'm a heterosexual (at least right now) female of North Indian/Pakistani/Kashmiri descent, though very few people guess my actual ethnicity and most think I'm either Arab or Latina. And I have a bit of an obsession with Arab and Latino men. *blushes*
From a male POV, I think initial attraction has a lot to do with symmetry of the face and the body of a woman. I don't think that race or color has much to do with it.
I have heard some people claim that people tend to like the traits that are unusual where they live; eg. A MENA men is more prone to like a blonde and blue eyed woman (probably is why a lot of MENA women dye their hair blonde. This is at least very true for Turkish women lol.). At least this is true for me. I live in Sweden and here the combination of light hair and dark eyes is not that usual at all and I happen to like that combo. Of course these days women dye their hair twice a week and some even use lenses and sometimes when it is "faked" it looks faked too and that is not as attractive as "the real deal". I too am a ethno-bastard (Turkish/Finnish) and when playing "guess my ethnicity" people tend to guess I am Eastern European and I actually tend to like how Eastern European women look. And some use the argument of "+ and - are attracted to each other" and the Freudian would claim "men are attracted to those who look like their mother and women to those who look like their father". Personal observations and experiences tell me none of those are true though. Important to note is that of course there are different forms of attraction, but here we are of course solely talking about physical/sexual attraction which I still believe is mostly about symetry. Then when it comes to love a great personality can of course "boost" a "less attractive face".
