Comments

1. Aaminah wrote:

   I remember when colored contacts first became the thing. I was fairly young and I saw the commercials and asked my parents why it was always a brown-eyed woman who got green or blue or purple contacts, but never a blue-eyed woman getting brown. I think that was one of my first real exposures to how self-hatred and media and consumerism affect how women of color see themselves. I resolved at that young age that I’d never get colored contacts. But then, I was blessed with parents who reiterated constantly that I was beautiful the way I was, and even if I didn’t always believe them, I guess I was rebel enough even then to not be willing to accept the TV trying to tell me otherwise.

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:01 am ¶

2. Persia wrote:

   Tara, I hated my brown eyes too and desperately told myself they were hazel. (And my skin is paper-white.) I don’t think it ever hit me before your post how universal the message is that brown eyes are blah/unattractive/dull.

   I want to give your teenage self a hug. Thanks for the post.

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:09 am ¶

3. Mark wrote:

   I guess I have a different take on this article because when I was younger I wanted to be darker and have afro hair instead of straight (well wavy) hair. I’m multi-racial (African-American, Irish and English) and I grew up in England. Oh by the way the Irish and English are two very different groups in Europe. My brother has afro hair and brown eyes. He was able to grow a flat top (we grew up during the 80s, early 90s) and I had to be content with my unmanageable wavy hair. I also have hazel eyes but to be honest I never thought it was better than having brown eyes.

   The last girl I really fancied (had a crush on) had these amazingly beautiful penetrating brown eyes. She would just give me a look and my brain would start acting all funny.
   I think brown eyes are beautiful!!!

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:46 am ¶

4. MizDarwin wrote:

   Wow. This hits me because just last night I was reading an SF novel–by a VERY good writer–who is describing a member of the upper-middle “genemod” class trying to pass as a lower-class member, and mentions her putting in “shit-brown” contacts to cover her genemod violet eyes.

   This is from someone who is generally insanely good at diversity, gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc. …

   I actually did want brown eyes, and for a while thought about brown contacts; my eyes are hazel and I’ve always felt they’re too light for my hair, esp. my jet-black eyebrows. Finally decided that coloring my eyes (mirror o’ the soul, etc.) felt too deceptive and self-negating to be comfortable with. (MY call about MY body–which I do color with hair dye, leg tanner, makeup, etc., so I’m not judging. YMMV.)

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 9:46 am ¶

5. esperanza13 wrote:

   I think that you see the same thing with hair color. Or at least, I did, growing up. My sister and I both have brown hair. From a fairly young age, my mother encouraged both of us to lighten our hair and be blonde. She was always telling us how pretty we are with “golden” hair. My sister recently decided to dye her hair a very dark shade of brown and our mother completely flipped out. My sister informed our mother that not only did she feel more beautiful with dark brown hair, but many of her friends thought it looked great too. Our mother responded by saying that her friends had “tricked her” into dying her hair dark because they “were jealous and didn’t want her to be pretty” (and by being pretty, she meant having blonde hair). I found the whole situation infuriating.

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 9:58 am ¶

6. The Cruel Secretary wrote:

   @ Mark–You said “flat-top.” Did you have to go in the Way Back Machine and stop at the Worst-Hairdo-for-Men Era?:-D I tease you…all love from Brooklyn.

   Before I derail this thread with folks naming the worst hairstyle for Black men, let me get back on topic.

   @Aaminah, I also remember when the colored contacts first became the rage. Back at that time, some Black women combined the contacts with the “fake hair” (flippable weaves, braids, and extensions). That became a *big* point of conversation within African American circles, complete with statements about “self-hatred,” “internalized racism,” and references to Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye. ” I, too, have a great parent–my mom, in my case–who told me when I was younger that my dark eyes were beautiful. So I, too, was spared that need to stick some other color on my eyes.

   @ Tara–my big realization in the little moment came when I first shaved off all of my hair to my scalp in 2003. In my life I rocked the press-n-curl, relaxer, afro, texturizer, corkscrews, and dreads. But even with dreads–as utterly gorgeous as I find them and understading some of the thought process behind that choice–I personally felt like I was still going for some sort of “swing-ability.” When I took the clippers and cut my hair off, I could actually see what my mom said about my eyes. Wildly enough, I could also see the woman who gave me the gift of my eyes and the rest of me–my mom.

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:02 am ¶

7. queen of sheba wrote:

   Funny–I also grew up frustrated and bored with my brown eyes; how much of the brown-eyes-changing-color advertising script has to do with the fact that there are MORE of us, d’you think?

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:17 am ¶

8. Tara wrote:

   @queen of sheba – There are certainly more of us, and also a complete lack of recognition about the really really vast array of colors and shades within the category “brown.”

   I mean, it’s no surprise given that one facet of racism is the practice of lumping really diverse groups of people into a monolithic category. Which, of course, is also the true with all racial categories to begin with.

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:36 am ¶

9. Paul wrote:

   I think people’re making a mountain out of a molehill on this eye color issue. Most white folk have brown eyes as well. I think the desirability of blue/green/etc. eyes comes from the relative scarcity. People want to stand out. Lots of white people put in blue contacts. Does that mean they hate their race as well?

   Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:45 am ¶

10. lunanoire wrote:

    Paul, it’s not just scarcity, but the relative power of those with that characteristic. POC have distinctive features as well that are less likely to be copied.

    I upset a friend regarding a similar discussion. Some people discuss skin -lightening, colored contacts, hair lightening, eyelid surgery, and hair straightening as if it’s only about personal choice and self-expression. If it really was a free-for all, you’d see dark brown contacts, and people dyeing their hair dark (unrelated to covering gray hair) at the same rate people blond-ify themselves. It’s clearlly not at the same rate, so there are other factors involved. Aesthetically speaking, I am so sick of seeing black and dark brown haired people with blond highlights that are supposed to look natural, but don’t. It’s different when people have a punk look or something delberately fake, but many folks have stripes that don’t match their coloring. The hair colorists and dye manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:10 am ¶

11. Aaminah wrote:

    Paul, wouldn’t you be willing to concede that there are many facets and reasons for this? Maybe for some people it is just wanting to stand out or be different. But for some others it IS about self-hate.

    Back when I remember the commercials, the women in them were olive-skinned with dark hair as well, always going from brown eyes to shocking bright eyes. What it said to me, as a Native girl, was that it wasn’t just the eyes that were the problem. To me, those women could have been Greek, Arab, or Latina. They didn’t look Native to me, but they could have represented us too. What it said to me, as a very young girl, was that there was something wrong with us but this was one way we could fix ourselves. Add to that the hair color commercials, that at that time were the same (as Esperanza above poignantly points out seeing played out): dark haired olive-skinned women who went blonde. Rarely, at that time, did we see blonde girls going dark in the commercials, nor blonde haired-blue-eyed girls in the commercial getting the green or purple contacts (much less brown). Taken together, this gives a much different understanding than what you seem to believe was at play. I am telling you, I was very young and I saw something sinister and wrong with what it was insinuating about me.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:14 am ¶

12. The Cruel Secretary wrote:

    @ Paul–brown eyes, like the African phenotype, is the dominant gene. That’s why most people have brown eyes. Tara wouldn’t have had written her post–and the rest of us wouldn’t be commenting–if that relative scarcity was not linked to the idea that white skin, blue eyes, and blond, straight hair (and let’s not forget thin and able-bodied) was–and still is–the ideal physical standard *at the expense of other beauty standards. * Do I believe that that white people who get blue contacts hate their race? I can’t speak to that, but I do wonder if they aren’t chasing after that ideal in their own way as well….

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:16 am ¶

13. Michelle wrote:

    Paul– really? Blonde hair is relatively scarce, too. So is thinness combined with tallness (in women). But what do all of these things have in common?

    Light eyes, hair, etc., might not be especially common among white people, but they are far more common. FAR more.

    From what I understand, ideals of beauty in old Europe and the British isles were not necessarily always blonde and blue-eyed, but with colonization and white supremacy (and let’s face it, uncondoned racial mixing) in the “new world,” came the need to indicate a lack of “racial taint.”

    Lots of things are biologically uncommon. Kinds of earlobes. Particular body shapes and sizes. Hair textures. That doesn’t make them all evolutionarily attractive. You are putting the cart before the horse here by failing to question the very “fact” that blue and green eyes are “beautiful.”

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:19 am ¶

14. Michelle wrote:

    Furthermore, Paul, your last question is a bit ridiculous. It means that they have bought into white supremacy just like POC. The whiter, the better, to a great extent.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:21 am ¶

15. Sulyp wrote:

    @ Paul,

    That is not the point of the article. It is not about “white” people in particular. It is about people with dark eyes (which encompasses more than just white people) being inundated with messages about how desirable light eyes are… and how companies such as Bausch&Lomb, Acuvue, and others are profiting from the insecurities of folks who do posses dark eyes. Try adding other ethnic features and skin color complexes into the mix with all of this eye color stuff and call it a “molehill”.

    _________

    Anyway in the past week, I have encountered this phenomenon (I’ll add that I am a WOC, so this is my perception of the events):

    An Asian person says their hair is “brown”. I look at it and IMO it is clearly black. This person feels offended. Why is this person offended for having what others would peg as “black” hair?

    A African friend of mine claimed that she was light-skinned and pretends to act offended when people allegedly “referred to her as such”, and I said from my point of view she is unmistakably dark-skinned, even from far away so she doesn’t have to be “offended” anymore. She still gets angry with me for not agreeing with her that she is light-skinned. Why?

    What I am getting at here is that even though most people of color know the “right” way to feel about themselves, sometimes with insecurities, especially with close friends, a few POC want to be indulged in their fantasies about being “oh so lighter, oh so special and different”…. when in reality, their pride is in one feature that’s summarily lumped with others of that ethnic group anyway.

    Why is it so important what White people think about us? What POC would call brown hair, Whites call black. What we say is hazel or green eyes, Whites call brown. Why are we so attached to the labels that are attributed to White people?

    There was a point in time as a teenager, and even through college that I was fixated with experimenting with hair colors and eye colors, just so I could get that “ambiguous but exotic” look that I so craved. Because if you are in that category, you get the benefit of not being boxed with a specific “race” and therefore considered more pretty, more hot, more not my boring plain Black self… yes, my self-esteem left much to be desired.

    So yes, I too understand that as a POC, my natural features are not necessarily what is considered beautiful, but as a young female, that realization from an early age cuts deep because as girls, we are socialized to know that our “good looks” is part of our currency in life. When you find out at the age of five that you are already “behind” in that department, it does some pretty wicked stuff to your self-image. Especially if the girl’s mother is also trapped in the same stew.

    I am now in my mid 20’s and really starting to feel myself now. Even though I know the baggage that comes along with being born who I was…. I have infinitely more appreciation for my looks now than even my own mother. It’s weird, it should be the other way around really. But I’m glad I don’t have stay in the revolving trap of chemically treating my hair, or envying the features of other ethnicities, cuz mine is just fine!

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:49 am ¶

16. Tara wrote:

    Paul, I think lunanoire makes an excellent point:

    POC have distinctive features as well that are less likely to be copied.

    One example that comes to me immediately – do you see white folks having surgery to have the folds in their eyelids removed to look more “Asian?”

    And ditto to all the folks who talked about POC going blonde, not as a punkish look, but as an attempt to look “natural.” I did the same thing myself, even though now I realize I look much better with darker hair.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:49 am ¶

17. Outcrazyophelia wrote:

    I distinctly recall going through a similar phase of desperately wanting to have something about me that wasn’t average for my race. I think it’s different for whites who want to change their eye color, the lens of race isn’t over that decision so much as prevailing beauty standards. On the outside looking in, you don’t fit into the beauty standards because you aren’t the right race–it makes you feel less than, like something is wrong with you that you can’t correct. I don’t think it’s making a mountain out of a molehill to acknowledge a single event that encapsulates some of the issues surrounding beauty and race and how they’ve become intertwined.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:55 am ¶

18. Fatemeh wrote:

    I like my curly hair and I like my brown eyes.
    But my struggle with brown eyes was always the opposite: I always wanted my brown eyes to be darker, so they were more like that black shade of brown that one sees often in peopleof color (in my case, Middle Eastern women).
    But they’re just plain brown.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 12:19 pm ¶

19. lockedwithpatience wrote:

    Whenever I see wedding photos, particularly of Indian and Pakistani women, I always think of how so many are really going to regret how faked they looked with their blue and honey contacts on!

    Just seeing people with contacts is ridiculous.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 12:44 pm ¶

20. Erica wrote:

    Tara — if it makes you feel better, my white blue-eyed friend badgered her mother into buying violet contacts and also looked totally ridiculous wearing them

    Funnily, last night my four-year-old daughter was making fun of my eyes (green) and her baby brother’s eyes (blue) and telling me how they weren’t as pretty as hers (medium brown, like her father). I personally think that brown eyes have a lot more depth and warmth to them. I always felt mine looked a bit washed-out. I don’t suggest this is necessarily typical, though

    To some extent, people are never satisfied with their own appearance. It’s infuriating when that is exacerbated by society reinforcing narrow ideals of beauty that few people can meet without makeup, contacts, or a barrage of hair products.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 12:50 pm ¶

21. marge twain wrote:

    I had thought about trying on colored contacts when I was a teenager, just for fun, like I played with other aspects of my appearance. They would probably look terrible. Tara, thanks for trying on the violet ones for me, now I know

    If they don’t even stock brown contacts that’s a shame. I love my very dark brown, almost black eyes. They go with my dark skin. And that model in the Freshlook ad who goes from brown to hazel looked better before.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 1:02 pm ¶

22. shirky wrote:

    my wife is constantly being praised/complimented for her “mad light” eyes by her yougn students, this is a fixation among the children for some reason. my optometrist said ‘eye color?’ I say, “brown”, he argues: “they’re hazel!” as if I’m saying they’re ugly. I just say hey, hazel is just brown with fat deposits all through them, ha ha. They’re brown and always have been. As a child I really wanted them green, which was associated with “spunky” children in books.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 1:15 pm ¶

23. FranSky wrote:

    Tara your honesty is appreciated. I too struggled with what I like to call, from Toni Morrison’s book, “The Bluest Eye” syndrome. And like you I had a trait that “whitened” me up as well… my hair. And it wasn’t until I realized just how lovely my very dark brown eyes are (eyes that may have come from my Black father or Bohemian grandmother) and how lucky I was to be connected to my fellows with the same dark color. In fact my eyes are so dark sometimes it’s hard to see my pupils. Anyway self esteem takes a while for us all I suppose but I think for some WOC it can take a bit longer due the the “all American” beauty standard.

    Interestingly enough I recently read a film review in the weekly alternative The Portland Mercury about the movie “Over Her Dead Body” starring Eva Longoria. Here’s a few lines from the relativly short review:

    *The plot is ludicrous. In Over Her Dead Body, a gigantic angel ice sculpture crushes dead-eyed Kate (Eva Longoria Parker) on her wedding day.
    *In fact, the whole cast (with the glaring exception of the shrill Longoria Parker whose dead, dead eyes fill me with fear) is downright likeable.
    *If only he could’ve added some spark into those lifeless Langoria eyes… (Seriously, does she have pupils? How can she see anything? Isn’t that what CG is for?)

    Okay maybe the film was bad. But I couldn’t help but detect some strong issues the reviewer had with Eva’s eyes. Hope I never meet that dude!
    ~F
    full review here – http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=531611&category=22133

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 1:41 pm ¶

24. Kaonashi wrote:

    I must be strange because I always buy the brown ones–they give my natural eye color an extra sparkle. IMO there should be more shades of brown because there’s some pretty ones out there.

    I’m probably going to be seared for this but in all honesty, I seriously doubt that most people are wearing lenses/dying their hair/doing whatever to emulate a White idea; I think it’s just people doing their own thing and having fun with a look. It’s more of the Ethnic Police (the people who think that people should only look/think/do X things if they are X race; any deviance is considered abnormal) who are putting all these hidden meaning on why people dye their hair, wear lenses, certain clothes, etc. I have yet to see an Asian or Black woman rocking colored lenses say “YES! One step closer to Whiteness!” it’s more like they just felt like rocking a different look, felt like they looked better in colored lenses, stood out more, etc. I’ve also never seen anyone tell a White person they were trying to be a POC because they tan, or get collagen in their lips or ass implants either.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 1:50 pm ¶

25. heather wrote:

    well this is interesting. when colored contacts came out, i wanted brown ones. i didn’t get them because i’m not that into artificially adjusting my looks, but i really really wanted to have brown eyes. always have. and i have light blue eyes.

    however, that said, there is an ideal in this society and it CERTAINLY extends to eyes. When my father (brown eyes) met my (hideously racist) great grandmother, the first thing she said to him is “oh, your eyes are brown.” Although they were both white people, she disliked him because he had physical traits she thought were “inferior”, and were associated with people of color. So yes, within the white community there are ideals of an ultra-white type of “beauty”.

    and kaonashi, isn’t the nature of cultural analysis to ask “why?” do people want to look very certain ways? of course on an individual level very few people of color are probably consciously trying to look white, but if there is a societal reward system sends subtle and blatant messages of beauty ideals then is that directing the ways that people choose to express themselves?

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 2:12 pm ¶

26. Tara wrote:

    Kaonashi, I actually know several POC, myself included, who wished for whiteness, or at the very least, physical traits associated with whiteness (including green/blue/purple eyes) as a kid.

    And I echo what heather said above. Critical thinking and cultural analysis means that we don’t take anything at face value, our choices aren’t always just about personal preference, and racism and white supremacy influences just about everything, beauty standards included!

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 2:43 pm ¶

27. marge perko wrote:

    i wore green contacts in my high school graduation photo. it was a culmination of reasons. my mom has green eyes, and most of the heroines in movies and romance books had these beautiful blue, green, hazel – those “jewel tone” eyes. and some guy in high school told me i had “murky brown eyes” – and that was the reason my crush at the time didn’t like me. ah, how i cried. the green contacts made me feel “beautiful.”

    i wore colored contacts, off and on, especially if i had to speak in public or “dress up.” my dressed down eyes were my brown eyes. my hidden eyes.

    until i met and married my current husband. he told me to “take those blue things off” so he could see into my real eyes. he has the gaze of tigers – yellow and green and a gold in between – but he loves my eye color best.

    most recently, i spent some time with my dad during my last visit home. we have the same eyes. they’re mirrors of brown – sad, happy, filled with tears, flashing with anger – they immediately show what we are feeling.

    living here in the midwest, i’m often tempted to hide behind another gem-colored pair. like smoking, i’ve quit the colored contacts for my husband. another bit of youthful artifice i’m letting go. i don’t know who looks more scared – the high school senior grinning nervously with her plastic gaze, or the thirtysomething woman with the naked brown eyes?

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 3:03 pm ¶

28. Ms. Four wrote:

    I have blue eyes and always wanted *bluer* eyes (like the fake blue we used to see in those contact ads), so I certainly bought into the ideal.

    I don’t disagree with the premise of this piece at all, but I do want to point out that many fair-skinned white people go to great efforts to darken their skin in the summer, either through actual tanning or spray-on. So I don’t think it’s quite right to say white people don’t do anything to change their appearances in a way you might not expect from a culture that considers white skin to be the ideal. I wonder how that fits in with all this?

    Even in this age of hyper vigilance about skin cancer, I know I get compliments when I get a tan.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 3:09 pm ¶

29. Kaonashi wrote:

    I understand that Heather. The problem I have with it is when people simply assume and make statements rather than asking the people who are actually buying the lenses/dying their hair/getting plastic surgery/ why they do it, because while you WILL get the people who will tell you “In my culture this is considered more desirable and I want to be able to get a good job/marry decently.” the vast majority (hopefully) will give you the buckeye and tell you that it’s “all for fashion/wanted a different look/sets my features off more/matched my outfit/etc.”

    What sucks is when there’s this assumption that everyone who does X must do it for Y, and that’s what I’m questioning, not about why people want to look certain ways.

    And even if you are born that way you STILL don’t win because people will still try to stick you in a corner. So instead of getting “Oh, she’s wearing colored lenses/straightens her hair/is blond/etc; she MUST be trying to emulate the White idea” you get “Oh, she/he has naturally straight hair/light skin/light eye color; she/he MUST think she/he is White.”

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 3:14 pm ¶

30. Wendi Muse wrote:

    fatemeh,

    i can definitely level, though less when it comes to eye color and more to body type. i have always wanted a more stereotypical black female body. you know, big butt, curves, big boobs, etc (or so the stereotype goes). these are the features that are most appreciated in our culture. yet i ended up with a boy body with not a curve in sight! it’s a daily struggle with my body image though because i think there is a part of me that wishes i were thin, the part of me that wants to conform with standard images of beauty, and another part of me that wants these other features that are generally associated with women who are far from skinny.

    it’s the grand catch 22. authenticity or conformity, they both bring me around to the same place: a friggin complex. lol

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 3:18 pm ¶

31. jen* wrote:

    I always wanted darker brown eyes [mine are dark, but my sister's are darker]. I love dark brown eyes – have since I was a kid. I could never understand why someone would want to wear contacts if they didn’t actually have to (for vision). Just one big mystery to me.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 5:41 pm ¶

32. Jay wrote:

    So I don’t think it’s quite right to say white people don’t do anything to change their appearances in a way you might not expect from a culture that considers white skin to be the ideal. I wonder how that fits in with all this?

    We still define “tan white skin” to be white. We certainly don’t define it as black or brown. So I’m not so sure it’s so far away from the status quo as you think it is.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 5:46 pm ¶

33. DivergentDana wrote:

    When I was younger, I wanted violet contacts so badly, but my father always railed against them as a symbol of the “European standard of beauty”. While I have put my looks through the ringer when it comes to measuring up to the standard since, back then, I can frankly, honestly say that it wasn’t the impetus… I also wanted to be 5′11” and sport green hair (not simultaneously with the contacts, of course). I wanted violet eyes because they were/are hella rare… the only person of any race I’ve ever heard that has them is Elizabeth Taylor. Sometimes, I do think my eye color is boring… so, rather than see it as coffee brown, I see it as pitch black… it seems more special that way, for some reason.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 6:45 pm ¶

34. NancyP wrote:

    I am still a four-eyes, since I never liked wearing contacts. Wouldn’t wearing tinted ones get annoying after a while? Who wants to see all blue tint, all brown tint, all purple tint? I can see the utility of a very faint color that might help one identify the things floating in their storage bottle or splat on the floor. But enough tint to affect how others perceive your eye color? And I can’t see that putting blue contacts on a brown or “hazel” base would be anything other than ugly – I would think people would put like on like to intensify the natural color.

    But I am white, and get weirded out by the thought of sticking things in your eyes that can encourage amebas or other infections to grow. The issue just never came up. I spent more time picking out frames.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 7:10 pm ¶

35. Torontonian wrote:

    Hmm, although there are Aryan beauty ideals, I think some of the preference for blue eyes may be because there is a general preference for the colour blue. I read somewhere that blue is the most popular colour; 80% of people’s favourite colour is blue.

    How many people’s favourite colour is brown?

    Still, light-coloured eyes sometimes look bad when the eyes have contracted pupils.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:28 pm ¶

36. Mickey wrote:

    Awesome post!

    My eye color is such a dark brown it could almost be called black.

    I didn’t wear contacts until I was in my 20’s (dance class), the doc let my practice putting in contacts with the colored samples he had recieved.

    I looked like a freak! Even with the so called traditional brown eyes, it was just bad.

    I have learned to embrace my cocoa eyes (I’m sticking with it) plus when they get real dark, the boyfriend knows I’m pissed.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:49 pm ¶

37. Mickey wrote:

    Oh yeah, and it makes my brown eyes blue when people call brown “shit-brown”.

    Just wrong.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 8:53 pm ¶

38. mez9 wrote:

    “Whenever I see wedding photos, particularly of Indian and Pakistani women, I always think of how so many are really going to regret how faked they looked with their blue and honey contacts on!”

    Lockedwithpatience, you may wish to note that light coloured eyes are found naturally amongst northern Indian women. There are quite a few natural-blue/grey eyed beauties. This is due to the area’s proximity to Central Asia.

    Don’t assume that all Indian women are dark-skinned, blackhaired, with brown eyes. I’m not denying that some will do the contacts thing or go for lightening, but it does occur naturally as well.

    By the way, I live in Singapore, and we get seriously annoyed at the occasional white person who writes in the local papers to bemoan the tendency of local girls to lighten their hair. The writers always talk about black hair is beeyootiful and that we should “celebrate our Asian black hair”. I get really annoyed about that because who are you to decide what is Asian and insist that we ‘preserve’ her image of what is Asian?

    The local girls here who do it are usually adding highlights because black hair can look a little flat with a certain skin colour. Some, especially the Indians, are naturally brownhaired. Older women colour it brown, because it looks younger.

    There are plenty of girls who rock the jet-black look. And there are some who go full blonde because they’re into Japanese styles – and you can tell from their clothes. Give me a break.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 9:58 pm ¶

39. Angela wrote:

    I’ve always been fine with dark eyes. Granted, I would have to be fine with them as I cannot put contacts in my eyes, but I never really thought about my dark brown eyes as less than asset (I remember swooning in 7th grade when a guy I liked was so fascinated by the fact that my eyes looked like deep, dark chocolate).

    I cringe when I see people of color wearing them (blue is the worst) because 9 times out of 10, they are the sort of folks who’ll grind you to the dirt to make their white co-workers treat them as “equals” over you.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:15 pm ¶

40. Tony wrote:

    It’s weird for me to think of people getting lighter colored eyes.
    While as I’ve mentioned before my skintone is pretty much “white dude with tan” my eyes are extremely dark.
    Evidently about the same color as Mickeys, they look pretty much black (as in the primary color) unless you get me close to fluorescent light, then you can tell it’s an extremely dark brown.

    The funny thing is, the only other person in the family with the same color eyes, is on the white side of my family (My great aunt, who recently turned 100)

    I love my ‘dark as the abyss’ eyes, can’t imagine changing them.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 10:23 pm ¶

41. wellroundedtype2 wrote:

    I just re-read “The Bluest Eye” and I was more keenly aware this time of the lethal combination of racism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and peer rejection — how these combine to dessimate the soul. But any one alone can sure harm to a huge degree self-esteem and pride in oneself.
    I am white, with brown eyes and frizzy-curly “Jewish” hair (I know not all Jewish people have this hair — but think Gilda Radner and that’s basically what I mean). My little one has eyes between mine and dad’s dark-dark brown ones, and hair in between mine and dad’s black hair. When asked, little one’s hair and eyes are black — and we’re talking about a gorgeous child (no, I’m not biased).
    I like my brown eyes, I think they look “deep.” I think most people, at least interesting people, have interesting eyes, though.

    Posted 08 Apr 2008 at 11:42 pm ¶

42. goc wrote:

    Ms. Four:
    “I don’t disagree with the premise of this piece at all, but I do want to point out that many fair-skinned white people go to great efforts to darken their skin in the summer, either through actual tanning or spray-on.”

    I come form a post-colonial nation where skin-lightening creams (Fair and lovely I believe it is called) is the most widely sold “cosmetic” product. When I first came to the US I found the sight of white people lying out in the sun for hours, tryin to get a’tan’ … a bit weird. My first reaction was to also view it as “we wanna be like them, they wanna be like us” kinda thing. Like using skin lightening cream is the REVERSE of trying to get a tan. On deeper reflection I definitely do not think the 2 can be equated anymore than you can equate affirmative action with reverse racism.
    The issue here is context. Many People of Color are socialized through a pro-longed history of racism and oppression based on their ‘darker’ features to reject them. Lighter skin, lighter eyes, lighter hair get you social acceptability in what remains a white dominated world. Tanned white skin is usually like you said to indulge a “summer look” … it gives of an image of exoticness, carribbean vacations etc and is kinda rooted in orientalism I feel. I highly doubt a tanned white person has ever been rejected a job or entrance onto a plane because of their “tan.”

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 12:30 am ¶

43. Jessi G. wrote:

    Thanks for this! I have brown eyes and have always LIKED them. And I’ve always preferred it in others. However, my friends growing up used to tease me about this. They didn’t understand WHY I would like brown eyes. I see that a lot. When I become interested in someone who has lighter eyes, I get different responses than when I like someone with brown eyes.

    Great article!

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 12:43 am ¶

44. about suntanning wrote:

    Sun tanning has nothing to do with people of color:

    In Europe, during much of the 18th and 19th centuries, fair, freckleless skin was considered attractive, especially in women, since tanned skin was associated with manual labour such as on a farm or in the outdoor employ of a wealthier person. Having fair skin signified that one was wealthy enough to hire other people to do manual labour. In 18th-century France, members of the royal court emphasized this point by powdering their faces to look as white as possible. As labour patterns shifted during the early 20th century, with indoor work becoming the norm, tanned skin came to be seen as a credential for membership of the leisured classes. When famous fashion designer Coco Chanel accidentally acquired a dark tan during a vacation on the French Riviera in the 1920’s, she ignited a fad among Caucasians for tanned skin. By the 1960s, a tan’s earlier social significance had been reversed and bronzed skin among Caucasians often signified social status, wealth and health, possibly for the opposite reason. Now that most jobs are done inside, tans among light-skinned people signify the wealth required to have the leisure time to acquire one.
    Sometimes tanning can be used for comedic purposes
    Sometimes tanning can be used for comedic purposes

    Intentionally darkening one’s skin did not become a socially desirable phenomenon in the West until the mid-20th century. For centuries, sharp divisions existed in most societies between the upper classes, whose members held positions of power and leisure indoors, and the commonfolk who typically led agrarian lives toiling outside. As a result, wealthier people tended to be fairer-skinned and this correlation made pale skin more desirable. Hence, the word “fair” came to mean “beautiful”. The Industrial Revolution brought poor laborers and wealthy industrialists alike inside under the same roofs and this distinction began to evaporate. By the end of World War II, the economic boom the United States experienced gave middle class citizens more time and money to devote to leisurely pursuits. Vacations became standard practice and the advent of air travel made warmer, tropical destinations a more realistic possibility for average people. Tanned skin became associated not with a hard life of labor in the fields, but with swimming pools, backyard barbecues, dinner parties, and exotic vacations. In this context, tanned skin took on a feature of attractiveness as a signal of being well-traveled, cultured, and supposed evidence of leisure wealth. It also became a signal of health and strength as the bodybuilding and fitness industries increasingly promoted tanning to highlight muscle tone and definition.

    from wikipedia
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning#Cultural_history

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 6:49 am ¶

45. lurker wrote:

    I have greenish brown eyes, dark hazel you could say. My parents often described them as “green” when I was a kid, but almost everyone I’ve met since my original parents who had anything to say on my eye color would say, “Oh, you have brown eyes!” I usually tended to “correct” such people and say they’re a greenish brown hazel. But perhaps I should probably just give up and call them brown, just to spite that old vanity. If people think they’re brown, for all intents and purposes they are. Light brown, maybe, but whatever. Typical eye color for white folks like me.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 8:12 am ¶

46. Eva wrote:

    Interesting.

    I think it depends on how the person looks. I’m a black woman with light brown eyes and skin. I used to color my hair blonde and people said it looked more natural than my dark brown hair. Right now my hair is light brown because I’m covering up my grey hair.

    Once a woman asked me if my eyes were real and not contacts, which I thought was bizzare because I’ve never thought my eyes were unusual or anything. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 8:40 am ¶

47. Risha wrote:

    @lurker – I think that you might be overthinking this. I, too, have green-brown hazel eyes (though not the dark version, so I may be picturing your eye color incorrectly), and people also sometimes mistake me as having brown eyes. But it’s usually because they’re the ones who 1. aren’t really looking, or 2. meet me on those days where my eyes really are brown. (FYI for those without hazel eyes, your eye color can often change from day to day.) It’s a shame that your parents had to grasp at the cultural “ideal” so hard that they ended up lying to both you and themselves about your real color, though.

    I’ve always wanted pitch black hair because I think that it’s gorgeous. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to lie to myself well enough to believe that it would be anything but a disasterous mistake with my coloring. It’s particularly annoying because I have to color my hair anyway – not because I dislike having brown hair, but because that shade of brown clashes with my skin. I never knew that your natural coloring could clash with itself until I hit puberty and my hair darkened.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 10:00 am ¶

48. different Ali wrote:

    I’m actually coming at this from the complete opposite side of things. I have blonde hair and blue/green eyes but I feel so much more “natural” when I dye my hair brown. Maybe it was having to live with dumb blonde jokes my entire childhood despite the fact that I was always one of the top 3 or 4 students until I got to college.

    I did get the whole blonde=beautiful thing drilled into me early on, and my mom had a much stronger reaction (and continues to roll her eyes) whenever I dyed my hair then when I got a mohawk or my tattoos… but in my experience at least, I got a lot more compliments (from strangers) when my hair was/is brown. Darker hair just seems to work better with my particular complexion and features (so Risha, I definitely know what you are talking about).

    And I always had to laugh a little when people with obviously fake blonde hair would compliment me on my brown (or fire engine red or black) hair.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 11:06 am ¶

49. Ms. Four wrote:

    Sorry everyone: I did not mean to equate white people tanning with wanting to lose white privilege or become a person of color, and I do understand the class connotations of a tan.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 1:00 pm ¶

50. Krista wrote:

    I have a weird opposite thing. I’m a pale Native, with green eyes and naturally light brown hair. I have always wished for black hair and dark brown eyes. I’ve always been told I’m “not as Indian” because I’m so light. Some ancestor somewhere gave me these traits, and they have been a trial.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 1:39 pm ¶

51. holls wrote:

    As a fully paid up member of POC, I gotta say that I read this whole ‘appearance dis-satisfaction’ differently as pertains to race.

    Look at currently popular actors (of both sexes) and models (Even of the generation as old as the super-white Kim Basinger who has commented in interviews that when she was a child she was taunted for ‘n—-lips’):

    Hair with thickness and wave, slenderness, golden skin, light eyes, not too-prominent noses (of any racial type), relative hairlessness of face and body, high cheekbones, and full lips.

    It looks to me like MIXED RACE is the prevailing ethnic ideal. At least currently.

    In Asia, rhinoplasty patients don’t want their noses to look ‘too Asian’, but they also don’t want to look white. They think ‘white noses’ are generally too prominent and ugly. Ditto the oft-mentioned eyelid folds. Most Asians don’t have them, true, but many do, and the desirable look is more mixed Asian than white.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 4:28 pm ¶

52. johnjihoonchang wrote:

    I personally have a preference for dark brown eyes and black hair, but I think that’s just because of narcissism.

    Posted 09 Apr 2008 at 5:43 pm ¶

53. aviator wrote:

    This reminds me of a discussion a few of my friends and I were having a couple months ago. We’re big comic book nerds, and we were debating the canonical eye color of Cassandra Cain (the current Batgirl, who’s Eurasian). I argued that they would be brown, since genetically it’s nearly impossible for someone of East Asian heritage to have any other eye color (that, and one of her co-creators aways draws her with big brown eyes). Everyone else claimed green, because “it’s pretty”. They didn’t outright say it, but the implication was there: brown isn’t attractive enough for their idealized fictional character.

    Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 1:25 am ¶

54. Risha wrote:

    @aviator – While I agree with you (her eyes are obviously and unmistakably brown), I’m pretty sure that she’s mixed race. I don’t know David Cain’s eye color, but he has light skin and hair. And who knows Lady Shiva’s racial background other than that she’s at least visually predominantly Eurasian.

    Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 9:55 am ¶

55. aviator wrote:

    @Risha: I generally use the term Eurasian to refer to people who are of mixed Asian and European heritage. I apologize for the confusion, and probably should have clarified in my first post.

    David Cain’s hair and eye color vary from artist to artist, but most of the time he has black hair (in flashbacks, he has white hair now) and blue eyes. No idea on Shiva’s exact nationality, all I know is that she’s generically East Asian.

    Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 1:41 pm ¶

56. Risha wrote:

    @aviator – My mistake. For some reason I was thinking that Eurasian = middle Asia.

    And I had totally taken Cain’s white hair as blond. I guess I need to catch up on some back issues!

    Posted 10 Apr 2008 at 9:20 pm ¶

57. Sara wrote:

    I have dirty blonde hair, and brown eyes. And I’ve always had a problem with that! I too stand in the sunlight just to see my eyes light, or cry for hours to see my eyes green-ish. I’ll pick up a high fashion magazine and it seems like all the models have blue eyes, it’s so frustrating!

    Posted 15 Apr 2008 at 8:48 pm ¶

58. Mariah wrote:

    Aishwarya Rai is considered to be very beautiful and the most beautiful from the other Indian actresses it funny because her features more white than indian but honestly I have brown it not that brown eyes are not pretty is that they are so common so many people have them that why I wish I had a different color . I have never been a fan of blue eyes but I think green and hazel are very pretty I don’t know . Do you really want to look a certain way to look more “white” because they are the world power right now it could be it just I feel I would look more attractive with hazel eyes and whiter skin

    Posted 06 May 2008 at 11:29 am ¶

59. Luvin my Brwn Eyez wrote:

    I luv my brwn eyes. I always get compiments from my caucasion friends. They like how they are dark when thier is no light and they turn light when it is sunny. I been told at the eye doctor that they wished they had dark eyes. Plus brown eyes look good in every eyeshadow under the sun!!!!

    Posted 21 May 2008 at 6:16 pm ¶

60. western mom wrote:

    My brown eyed blonde haired daughter, is a combination of Sicilian, Polish, German and English. Sort of like a cross between Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly. Her brown almond shaped eyes make her look exotic.She even won the “Prettiest Eyes” award at a beauty pageant. As the old saying goes “Blue eyes are beautiful, but brown eyes are sublime.”

    Posted 27 May 2008 at 12:04 pm ¶

61. bea wrote:

    I totally understand how Tara feels.

    I am currently in a relationship in which my boyfriend has made many comments about how attractive women with large, blue or green, droopy, Caucasian eyes are to him. He has also talked about how he likes the white skin on red heads.

    I being half Asian, with brown eyes and dark skin, feel very hurt by this. I am tired of getting these messages from the media, society and even my partners!

    Posted 29 May 2008 at 1:24 pm ¶

62. genq10 wrote:

    I always felt it was the shape of the eyes, rather than the color, that made eyes beautiful. On top of that, I just don’t find light eyes attractive, I tend to find them cold and creepy (especially on men).

    Brown eyes have pigment that prevents sun damage, so they’re probably better for your eyes than blue eyes are (functionally).

    But I digress. What always bothered me about eye color issues (a la Toni Morrison) is that it reveals how pervasive the White Standard is: it makes people obsess about EYE COLOR. Who even NOTICES eye color anymore? Unless is freakish, I probably won’t give it a second glance.

    Posted 12 Dec 2008 at 12:28 am ¶

63. Destiny Hemphill wrote:

    As a teenager of color of today’s society, I understand exactly what you mean, Tara. At school as a younger child, I remember always hearing how beautiful blue eyes are or blond hair or straight hair. Never how beautiful dark brown eyes or the delicate shape of Asian eyes were or the unique texture of hair of African heritage or the waviness of hair often found in Latinas. Never how beautiful dark skin was. I remember a teacher told this girl of who was black and white, who was very pretty might I add, that she would be so much more beautiful if she had lighter hair–that sandy blond type–or lighter eyes. It struck me as funny. Not to say that those phenotypes mentioned that are deemed beautiful are not beautiful. But it is a problem that oftentimes it appears as though that is the only thing beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, our mentality of beauty has expanded. This is proven in that we are even able to speak about this self-loathe that infects so many people, regardless of ethnicity, yet especially people of color. It is an intricate issue really tied into race like you mentioned. Me, personally, I have always wanted darker eyes (even though people say that they are almost black) and darker skin. However, if I had not identified the self-loathe in other people and made a stance that I was not to be infected with the diseas, I know that I would have been very subsceptible to finding faults within my African heritage.

    Posted 27 Jan 2009 at 7:52 pm ¶

64. Sumana Harihareswara wrote:

    MizDarwin — I recognized that you’re talking about Nancy Kress’s “Beggars” series. I read that passage as implying that the upper-class character is the one casting aspersions on the class implications of brown eyes; Kress is showing that the parents with the money to modify their children’s genes chose violet or green eyes. Kress isn’t actually saying that brown eyes are ugly.

    Posted 24 Mar 2009 at 1:09 pm ¶

65. Anonymous wrote:

    Wow. This post made me think about a lot of things about how I was treated growing up in regards to my eye color, skin color, and hair.

    I’m a Heinz-57 as far as genetics are concerned- Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and British Isles. My mother has greenish-brown eyes, and my dad has straight-up brown. Same goes for my mom’s sister and her husband. Somehow, though, myself, my sister, and both my cousins (all on my mom’s side) have light, grey-blue eyes, deathly pale olive-shaded skin, and nappy almost-black hair.

    People looking at baby and toddler pictures of me always comment on my eyes, saying that they’re so glad they stayed blue, how pretty they are. But, in the same breath, they say how much like a boy I looked, because I had a short, poofy fro of hair. Other kids used to ask me if I was a boy or a girl. I wanted long hair, so badly, but my hair was so nappy that growing it out really meant growing it OUT, not down my back.

    I’ve had dreadlocks since I was thirteen. My hair was a constant source of frustration and embarrassment through my early childhood. I wanted SO badly to have nice, straight, style-able hair instead of the frizzy, unruly, intractable fro on my head. I would stand in front of the mirror after I took a shower, when my hair was waterlogged into straightness, and think how pretty I could be if my hair would just stay like that. When I was thirteen, I finally got tired of the whole routine of conditioning and combing and straightening. I threw up my hands, stopped using conditioner, and lo and behold, with only a little encouragement, I had a head of beautiful, neat, easy-to-manage dreadlocks.

    This was when things got weird.

    I was working at the time running birthday parties for kids at the zoo. I began to notice mothers taking second looks at me. I had a white mother stare at me and then stammer out “you look… very… uh… wait, where are you from?” Which I had no clue what to make of. I had a Polish man ask my why I ruined my “pretty Caucasian face with a nigger hairstyle.” I had a white father tell me I looked “black from behind” (creepy bastard). I had a man (white, again) insist that I must be a rasta (I’m not, at all), because “why else would a white chick have hair like that?”

    I was confusing. My eyes and skin were in direct contradiction to my hair, and people did not know how to categorize me, which box of stereotypes to put me into. I don’t read as Middle Eastern, but I don’t quite make the grade for straight-up Caucasian. I just barely miss it. Just enough to cause a little cognitive dissonance.

    In the end, even though I still hated my hair for a couple of years after getting dreadlocks, I came to love my hair. I still have the dreads, now kept trimmed at a length halfway down my back. They’re gorgeous, and unique, and while sometimes I still catch myself looking longingly at my friends’ straight hair, I wouldn’t trade them for anything else.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:51 am ¶

66. loaded24 wrote:

    Anonymous :What does that have to do with the discussion on light eyes vs.brown eyes? You lucked out you got an eye color most brown eyed people wish they had.

    Posted 21 Apr 2009 at 12:50 am ¶