Desi Dating
16 May 06 in Commentary
Desi babes are the new “it” girls on the American dating scene, at least according to The Telegraph:
Amisha Upadhyaya’s fine-featured dusky face and cascading waist-length black hair would turn any man’s head. But Upadhyaya, a young New York-based writer-director, admits it helps that Americans consider Indian women to be beautiful and strong. This favourable reputation has certainly contributed to propelling Indian women’s success in the United States, she says.
Indian women are the saucy new dish on the American dating scene. Until recently, American men had a taste for east Asian women — Japanese, Chinese, Korean and so on. Now, their appetites whetted by Aishwarya Rai’s pout in popular fashion magazines and hip hop artist Maya Arulpragasam, aka MIA’s, gutteral crooning, Western men are craving desi babes.
What I find alternately frustrating and amusing about these articles is their continual focus on the mating preferences of white men, as if “exotic” women don’t exist until white men discover them. Much is made of the stereotype-driven appeal of the exotic flower, and then towards the end of the piece we get the reaction of the lust-object. Men of different races are of course invisible, unless we’re talking about the endlessly fascinating phenomenon of black men plucking innocent white flowers.
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More: Stereotypes, Interracial, Dating, Indian, White
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