the Human Race(s), standards of beauty, & the BJD hobby

I'm with Taco here on this; there's a level of reasonability that must be considered.

I don't assume that everyone who doesn't take me seriously in the workplace does so because I'm a woman, for instance. Maybe they just can't stand my personality, or don't like the products I make.

I don't assume that everyone who sneers down their nose at me in public does so because I'm overweight. They could be offended by something on my shirt, or hate the brand of the purse I'm carrying just as easily.

Could my gender or my weight or some other factor of this kind be the things be at work? Absolutely! -- but I am not going to assume they are and demand these people correct themselves on respect for my gender or size unless I actually know that was why they behaved as they did.

That said, I am glad the mention of exoticism as a form of racism came up. It's not really a subject I want to touch myself, but one that I feel I've seen traces of here and there in the hobby, not just in this context.

 

There are some few people with dark skin, and dark hair that have a another color on their eyes then brown/dark, Tarkan for example have really light eyes for being turkish, I think their green/blue something, and I think these "standards of beauty" is just a funny thing people come up with, like that someone have a natural blue haircolor and pink eyes, but there are some black haired people that have a kind of blue highlight in their hair, once I saw an asian baby who was blond and the African albinos are white and blond (but they have a sickness ofc)
and what people do with BJD's that are out of the normal, are just simple creativity

 

I'm with surreality and taco on this one. I believe that this thread is reading way too much into the spectrum of BJDs. I'm sure, if we were to poll every doll company, that their reason for pairing a dark doll with light eyes is because the pairing looks nice, or that it is an issue with photography. It's probably going to be a very simple, no-frills reason, overall. Claiming a company to have some darker ulterior motives reads way too much into things.

I think this is probably the reason why I never understood what all this was about. If we read into something as minute as this, what else will we begin to read into? Overall, I think the answer to all of this is that it just looks good to the individual.

 

Honestly, I can only point out what has been presented to me as girl growing up in the western world, I don't have access to the majority of those thoughts that you refer to, but don't accuse me of presumptuousness when there has been no evidence to the contrary. I LOVE Iplehouse for trying, because that's what matters- but I think the true question here is why they're the first to break ground this way, why this aesthetic (regardless of how individuals may feel) is not presented through our representations of beauty (which includes BJDs) as generally as that of the "normal" skintone. I'm sorry to those of you that are offended by my statements, but this is what the reality is for me- this is what I am confronted with daily, and to see it as "whatever people like is what sells" only says that people must not like and that therefore is why it does not sell. Much as I appreciate Iple for what they're doing, I'm not going to be able to buy every doll in ebony and support them financially single handedly. Nor am I going to write and complain over the way in which they present their dolls. This thread asked for opinions, so I gave mine. I cited evidence from my 20 years of life, and if you can show me different then I encourage you to do so. I welcome the change more than you could ever know, and I applaud any of you that feel that all races and skin-tones are beautiful, but I would like to caution you that the giant beast of public opinion is an aggregate of this- and therefore is not going to be an accurate portrayal of your personal beliefs either. I may not know how many of you think and feel, but how strange then that so many of you feel this way and it's not represented by that aggregate at all. I only spoke of what I've seen and experienced and learned through trial and error- like anyone else.

 

Teruchan, does it affect anything at all in knowing these types of BJDs have only been around for about a decade? Only up until a few years ago single joints were the norm. 70-80+cm dolls were rare and fantasy parts were hardly considered mainstream. These are all relatively new companies and as many people have stated within another thread, creating a stable darker resin is something many companies are still having issues with. Given the number of darker dolls that are on the market right now in such a short amount of time I think is a VERY good indicator that the companies are moving forward at quite a rapid pace in offering variety. As a half Mexican girl myself I can say I also find very few dolls who share a brown skintone (not black, nt white, but that in between brown so many people can identify with) but I don't see it as some underlying hatred toward non-white people by these companies since once again, I think it's pretty evident that in just 10 short years that many BJD companies really are expanding their horizens. These things take time and plain and simple, darker resin is more difficult to offer than lighter financially.

 

Teruchan, I accused you of presumption because of the following evidence:

This is a presumption that your features "are not considered glamorous or ethereal or anything." Where is this fact written? Or was this idea inferred from media portrayals of dark skin? If so, that's a presumption, that is, supposing something is the case based on probability. But the reality is that the media is not the same as individual humans. Some of us were raised to think critically, and to embrace all cultures. And some of us are raising our children that way (more than you might think!) Apart from that not all media portray dark skinned people in a non-glamourous, non-ethereal way. Consider Telemundo. Or Essence. It's acknowledged that these two media outlets have had a huge impact on the way dark skinned people are perceived.

As you said above, you don't have access to others' thoughts. You can assume the worst of people or recognize that we live in a heterogeneous society, that is becoming more accepting of diversity as time goes on. It's a glass half full or half empty kind of thing.

You can look at the dearth of dark skinned dolls in the same way. Is it sad that there are so few? Sure. But the number is growing-- most would consider this a good thing!

Finally, you have commented about Iplehouse dolls in detail, and you've wished they would go "all the way." But I notice that of your nine dolls and four heads (quite a lot of resin!) there are no dark-skinned Iple dolls among them.

Again, if you want Iplehouse to make more dark skinned dolls, you should buy them. That's how the marketplace works, after all. Companies make what people are actually buying, not just talking about. As I said before, if the idea of light eyes in a dark skinned head bothers you, buy the dolls on their site that have the combination of eyes and skin color you DO like. They and other doll companies will take notice.

 

You can't be suggesting that the existence of specialty channels/publications overrides the rest of mainstream media - Or that individual outliers mean that population-level colour prejudices don't exist?

Because while I think the answer to the original question about light eyes in dark dolls is a complicated one with many possible explanations, suggesting that North American culture at large doesn't contain negative attitudes regarding skin colour strikes me as an absurd thing to argue. History is what it is, no?

 

Of course I'm not saying that-- did you read my entire post? Where in that post or my previous ones did I say that N. American culture at large doesn't contain negative attitudes regarding skin color? What I said was that N. Am culture is increasingly embracing diversity. Do you see the difference there? It's not so subtle.

What I am saying regarding the media is that it is a mistake to presume that patterns of beauty portrayed in the media reflect the beliefs or preferences of all of a given populace. Per teruchan: "but how strange then that so many of you feel this way and it's not represented by that aggregate at all."

Actually, it's not strange at all. The media is NOT an aggregate. The people working as editors, publishers and owners of our media do not reflect the general population. How long did it take for multiracial couples to appear on television shows and commercials, for instance? In my recollection, it happened long after such couples became commonplace in real life. The media does not necessarily reflect the aggregate. It reflects what editors/publishers/etc. believe what a particular demographic wants to see or should see.

 

When you challenged Teruchan's comment about what features aren't valued - I don't think for a second that she was speaking in absolutes rather than generalities. Obviously the beliefs of a majority aren't going to reflect every single individual - individuals are part of the population, but that doesn't make everyone a perfect representative of their population/demographic - that should go without saying!

For the record, I both agree with you that it's not strange that so many people claim not to agree with that mainstream and can nod along with her eyebrow-raising at it - everyone can be an outlier in some sense, but if too many people are then it makes just as much sense to wonder if there aren't other influences at work.

 

Teruchan called it a fact but you yourself admit it is a generality. It is because it is a generalization that people brought up counter examples. I would argue it's a generality based on perceptions. And when there are multiple perceptions, it makes sense to bring them up. Otherwise, what is the point of debate?

Yes, definitely there are other influences. DOA has a niche audience. It would be a mistake to say we are representative of N. America or any other continent. And as we are not representative, it's likely that some of our beliefs will differ from the general populace. But it's important not to discount the fact that the media is not necessarily an accurate representation of what people believe.

 

Exoticism as racism? I can see how that can happen, but don't really agree with the premise. Is exoticism racist? I think you should be asking, what is exoticism?

I think of the "exoticness mentality" as a phase in acceptance. Anything outside an existing worldview is by definition exotic. You can either hate it, ignore it or like it. If you like it, you are probably going to think of it as different and exotic, because it is when compared to what you know.

Exoticness is energy: it gets you to think about it, to analyse it, to give it attention. It is only human to treat the unusual features as special until you acclimate, i.e. "get used to it". As you learn about the exotic thing, you find ways it is not so different from what you know and appreciate their own unique merits. Eventually the exoticness goes away--it's become another thing in your life, something familiar.

That is integration. This is the ideal people seek when talking about cross-pollinating cultures, to preserve what is best and unique from every culture. Without the exotic phase, it doesn't happen. The initial admiration, the belief that something good and worthwhile is there to be found, needs to be present. You don't learn more about something you don't care about.

Maybe you can call exoticism a form of racism. It can be. But I call it more generally a form of attention, and is not so immediately negative. If the acceptance as superficial, that's because it must be--you know next to nothing about it from such casual contact! The learning must start somewhere and this is certainly better than nonacceptance. Acceptance cannot be imposed by fiat and must be grown.

I don't think anyone can ever genuinely accept something that they did not interact personally with on a regular basis--there would be no opportunity for intimacy, familiarity or experience. I don't think that's so much a criticism as it is a practical observation: not everyone wants to or can spend a year or ten living in various countries or even various regions of the same country. Exotic superficial acceptance may very well be all that we can afford in a mortal lifespan.

 

Well, people are a mixed bag and there are those whose attitudes are at least a century behind when it comes to the diversity of our population. However, there's a lot of people that aren't like that either. Since you can't see into people's heads, you have to decide whether or not you're going to assume the worst of people you don't know or give them the benefit of the doubt. Assuming the worst is going to make you feel worse and it does a disservice to other people. Yes, sometimes people are operating from an unpleasant bias, but that doesn't mean that those things are always at work. Sometimes the explanation really is a lot simpler and less unpleasant -- you're going to have to trust me on that one.

1) It's a relatively new hobby
2) It's a relatively small hobby -- there's been an explosion of new dolls and companies over the past few years, but prior to that the choices were more limited
3) The aesthetic that you want has taken awhile to evolve -- abjds were originally made by a company (Volks) who made anime type figure kits, if that tells you anything.
4) There have been issues with making stable dark colored resin
5) Someone has to do it first, might as well be Iple
6) Just as you want a doll that you feel represents you, doll companies might have been assuming that their primary market (Asians) were thinking the same thing hence the lighter skin tones.

Except that there are other reasons why people don't necessarily want a doll like what Iplehouse is creating -- they might prefer stylized sculpts, they might be concerned about the dark skin resin holding up well over time, they might not want to shell out extra money for darker resin, they might want to do mod work and be worried that they won't be able to do things like sand dark resin. etc etc etc. People make choices about dolls based on all kinds of reasons. Some do prefer the way lighter resin looks, but that doesn't mean that they don't value dark skinned people (maybe they just want a doll that's reminiscent of themselves and their families which is basically what you want). Of course you can read into it what you want, that's up to you.

I think this is part of the problem, you feel like majority opinion is 'X', because of what you have experienced. However, your personal experiences may or may not actually mesh well in fact with trends in the abjd world. Also, the 'Public' is made up of a lot of individual human beings who don't all feel the same way, and a lot of media outlets are not the most on top of things either. Just remember what you yourself just said : "I may not know how many of you think and feel..." Maybe you need to remind yourself of that when you start to think the worst of people. Extending those feelings towards abjd companies, is even more problematic, since they really don't share the same history and culture that we do.

 

My point is that the terms "fact" and "generality" aren't mutually exclusive categories - if a statistically significant sampling of people believe any given thing, then it's not wrong to say that the society in question subscribes to believe XYZ. It should also be a given that agreeing with that isn't not the same as saying that every single person in that society thinks the same way.

I do think that it's safe to say that it's a fact that there's a level of racialization/colour prejudice to societal standards of beauty - but that doesn't in any way suggest that there's no point to a debate. After all, we could spend days (years! ) debating how pervasive those standards are, how they manifest themselves, and what the effects of those manifestations are and any number of other things!

 

I don't argue with the general premise you're discussing, but that's not what I'm talking about, and I'm pretty sure that's not what splynterhayde was talking about when it was brought up. That's interest -- not what I'd consider exoticism or cultural fetishism. It's, "Hey, I don't know what's going on there, I want to find out," in a sense -- not, "I presume to know what's going on there and I'm going to take my skewed perception and fetishize it." I wouldn't, for instance, call a friend of mine 'integrating' or 'educating' when someone she meets online insists she can't be Chinese because she's not submissive and meek enough, or that -- for extra creep factor -- a guy says he loves dating Asian girls because they're so small. (*shudder*) Sure, they might learn otherwise, but it isn't her role as a human being to be someone else's learning experience in that respect without her consent. Exoticism is less about learning about the reality, and more about being enamored of the cultural stereotypes.

 

Facts and generalizations are quite different categories. Facts are observations or verifiable assertions. They can be proven to be correct. Generalizations are inferences based on evidence. A presumption is a specific type of generalization, based on probability. (For instance "They were presumed dead." Why was that presumed? Because in that particular situation, the probability of a person surviving is almost nil.) So generalizations are based on facts, but they are NOT the same thing as facts. So if a person is drawing conclusions about a broad population based on personal experiences with a subset of that population, one is indeed presuming. Why? Because the person is making an inference about the entire populace based on probability. Why is this important? Because inferences, unlike facts can be incorrect.

I also disagree with your assertion that "if a significantly significant sample of people believe a given thing that it's not wrong to say that the society in question subscribes to believe XYZ." You are misusing the term "significant." 1% can be a significant number in certain contexts, but it would be completely incorrect to say that society in general subscribes to a belief held by 1% of a given population. It would be far more accurate to say that a minority/majority of society members subscribe to believe XYZ. And even in this case, it's made clear that we are not talking about everyone.

I don't think there's any disagreement over the fact that there's a level of racialization/colour prejudice to societal standards of beauty. But note that you qualified your statement by adding the word, "level." There's a difference between this statement and saying, it's a "fact that our features are not considered glamorous or ethereal or anything." Note the absence of qualifiers in that statement.A fact would add that qualifier: "Some do not consider our features glamorous or ethereal or anything." But that statement implies that the opposite is also true, for some members of our population.

 

I didn't say "signifcantly significant", I said "statistically significant" - and yes, the likelihood of something not being related to chance can be as low as 1% (or even smaller) depending on what you're studying, but we're not talking physics here, we're talking social beliefs in human populations.

Anyway, I think we're wildly off-topic at this point.

 

Oops! That's what I meant to type-- I'm assuming you gathered that from the rest of my comment.

And yes we are getting OT. But surely you would agree that statistical significance is as least as important in the social sciences as in physics, based on the type of measurement done in each.

 

Oh, totally. You'll get no fight from me there!

 

Just speaking about race in general this is basically what I had to learn. I'm one of those people who tends to just give people the benefit of a doubt regardless though, even if something may not feel right to me, because I would want someone to do the same for me if our situations were reversed.

Speaking in regards to dolls. I personally don't care if an Asian company who hasn't had much contact with persons of color outside of TV and other media outlets styles there dolls of color with hair and eye colors that may not actually be common among a large percentage of people of color. Gods knows I don't. Most of my personal black characters don't have brown eyes or brown hair. In fact when Lahela's teaser came I really had to think through rather I could pull off getting her because she was styled/looked very much like one of my favorite OC's, even though I wouldn't be buying her to be that specific OC. So for me, just as I style my dolls/characters based on specific preferences I really can't expect a small doll company, who's target audience isn't me to do any better, or think that their reasons are somehow more insidious. I'm just glad these companies have decided to make dolls of color AT ALL. And in so short a time. I mean it took Mattel 21 years before they introduced black barbie.

 

We have a very limited concept of race. "White" people, "Asian" people, "Black" people, and "Native American". The problem is the stereotypical description of those "races" only describes a very narrow group of people, and doesn't reflect the diversity of humanity in any way, shape, or form. Back in the early 1900s, scientists tried to classify "sub races". They made distinctions between the "purest" subraces and those that had "admixture".

For example, Warner Oland was not considered "white" when he came to the US, he was considered mixed race, white and Asian, even though he has no Asian background. A genealogist searched his background for generations, and they were all Swedish. Many people consider Swedish people "the whitest people in the world" - yet he could not play a white character and was given Asian roles. Those narrow definitions of race haunt us still today. While the concept of "white" has grown to the point that we can't even comprehend someone thinking Warner Oland was Asian, we still narrowly restrict other races.

This becomes a problem when we talk about dolls. If a doll isn't 100% stereotypical to a certain race, then people question it. (I've been reading a lot of racism blogs and POC doll blogs lately...) Certainly racism is at play right? But - most the people in the world do not fit into those narrow definitions of race. That is why we speak about "ethnicity" - those with a similar genetic and cultural background. This is a better way to describe groups of people.

This is an Asian girl. Yes she's a natural blonde, no she's not mixed race. She's Hmong. This is another batch of cute Hmong kids.

All four of these children are the same ethnic group, from the dark haired dark skinned girl to the blonde girl and the brunette girl and boy in between. They are all Sami and in the band The Blacksheeps.

Where do you put the Berbers? Irish Travellers? The Maori? What about the 370 million indigenous people in the world? Certainly these groups deserve representation too, and that doesn't even get into the growing number of people who are mixed race! (If you're interested in indigenous people, I recommend this site: http://www.survivalinternational.org/)