Why do Taiwanese women want to look as sick as ghosts?

Story from the TT

Skin tone products sell `self-confidence’; why would looking as pale as a sick ghost give women self confidence?

Why would they block out sun rays that are improving absorption of vit. D and calcium (improving bone structure), than replace it with chemical and artificial products to whiten their skin … I don’t get it …

On top of that they are buying useless calcium and vit D fortified milk …

Women here get angry if you say they look strong. Cultural difference. You tell me I look weak I might get huffy. You tell them they don’t look weak and they get huffy.

Like men care.

I do, no ghost in my bed …

My ex complained constantly about my weight. The only man I have ever been with who thought I was fat.
So yes, the men here care.

So you’re telling me cultural expectations for women to be weak is the explanation for my school trying to give me a big strong man to carry a basket of blankets across a street? Yeesh. Make me retch.

Amen sister. But yes. Because if you carry those things yourself your arms might get muscular. And that is just icky.

Oh, I get it … all normal skinned, strong women have to find a foreigner to get married …

HAHA YES it would seem

its ok, ensures a steady supply of women for “imported” husbands :slight_smile:

A Taiwanese woman explained to me that in western cultures, being “tanned” is a sign of health and having a better life, i.e. you are at a spa/salon all day getting tanned, you are at the beach, you are outdoor, you are active, etc…you don’t need to be in an office all day because you are rich enough to be living a great life outdoors…in Taiwan, being “pale” means that you are not laboring in the fields under the hot sun working…it also distinguishes them from the laborers and servants (i.e. Filipinos) who have darker skin and who are labelled as, “lower class”…

So our definitions are flipped around…

Not all western cultures prefer tan. In the south of the US, light is in. Also in Mexico, light it is. But yes, the pale skin shows a) youth and b) wealth.
The musclelessness also.

[quote=“Pluck-A-Duck”]A Taiwanese woman explained to me that in western cultures, being “tanned” is a sign of health and having a better life, i.e. you are at a spa/salon all day getting tanned, you are at the beach, you are outdoor, you are active, etc…you don’t need to be in an office all day because you are rich enough to be living a great life outdoors…in Taiwan, being “pale” means that you are not laboring in the fields under the hot sun working…it also distinguishes them from the laborers and servants (i.e. Filipinos) who have darker skin and who are labelled as, “lower class”…

So our definitions are flipped around…[/quote]

Actually it was like this in western culture until the beginning of the last century, and for exactly the same reasoning. We flipped around right about the industrial revolution when the working classes started spending all their time indoors (working in factories). Suddenly all the working class people were pasty white and the rich people had plenty of leisure time to be outside and get tan.

I had a feeling it was because of this. Whenever they do that to me I proudly hoist whatever it is and do it my goddamn self.

[quote=“SuchAFob”]My ex complained constantly about my weight. The only man I have ever been with who thought I was fat.
So yes, the men here care.[/quote]

I bet you could have beaten him in an arm-wrestle.

There’s nothing wrong with naturally dark or naturally fair skin. But some of the women here have taken this skin-lightening thing so far that they actually look ill. It’s absurd. :loco:

I thought there was some old trend back in the day in China where being light-skinned (and being a woman) was prized. Perhaps for the reason of “toiling in the fields” that was mentioned. Perhaps also because there were constant invasions of darker Tanguts, Mongols, Jurchens and other non-Han “barbarians.”

Just be happy that women here don’t blacken their teeth as they used to do in japan :astonished:

In England, I am told, they prefer women with huge pendulous boobies!

One of the silliest things you can see here, is women opening an umbrella when crossing a three-step-wide alley when the sun is shining. They’re really paranoid.

I love creamy white skin. I like tanned skin, too, but nothing gives such a blood rush to the naughty regions as the sight of silky alabaster flesh. Slobber, drool, slobber.

They do it even when the sun is NOT shining … afraid that the sky will fall on their permt hair …

How funny, I was just thinking about this last night when I got home from the cinema and saw a big billboard outside the newly opened pharmacy oposite to where I live that was advertising something called “Bi-White”. I’m not sure if it’s only for bi-sexual white wanna be’s or not, but I really don’t get the pale skind syndrome here. Nor do I get the European “spent all day on the beach” thing, but hey, each to their own.
Maybe it’s just that they’re big fans of Micheal Jackson here and want to imitate him? :wink:
But I have to be honest and say that I don’t really like the super pale sickly look, it just makes the hair in the back of my neck rise slightly…
It’s funny how beauty ideals change, a few hundred years ago in Europe it was sexy to be fat, like really fat, as it showed you had a lot of cash and wasn’t starving.
The thing that gets to me is that we’re always trying to be someone else than ourself, why do we always have to try to look like someone else?