ASU2003

I definitely noticed this as well.

You could also tell the American girl tourists because they had a tan line across their chest about two inches above where their shirt/top dipped a lot lower.

I have plenty of pictures and could probably make this thread fully NSFW.

The other obvious thing was European girls were more likely to go topless at the public beaches where the tourist girls weren't up for it.

Shell

To dippin:
...while you were posting quotes from the media in your comment,i was editing my comment to say that you've been influenced by the unkind media...our posts passed each other...your's validated mine in the area of "the media". I have no comment on the rest as you are entitled to your opinion.

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..."Say what you think. Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" ~ Dr. Seuss

MSD

I don't think you can always tell. I think there are some distinguishing characteristics, especially among eastern European women, but it's likely just as common that you mistake one for the other and don't know it because you're not proven wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmaion_Bias

ratbastid

I think that's a WHOLE other thread. I have some thoughts on the matter, from first-hand experience.

Charlatan

I think the reason people are reacting to this the way they are might have something to do with judging people based on ineffable things like looks and attitude. We are toying with stereotypes and nobody likes to be judged against that.

That said, I can agree that a French person's mouth (man or a woman) has a different appearance (especially when in motion) due to the way their language develops the muscles in their face.

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- Old Man Luedecke

Zweiblumen

If they are from UK then it's not tan but rust

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Sodomy non sapiens. : I'm buggered if I know

DaniGirl

European Women are HOT!!!

Jetée

Must be an accumulation of all that "pursing" they do; I'm steadily learning the tongue and I notice the fair-to-good amount of "oo"s my mouth motions.

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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

DaniGirl

Plan9

"White people all came from Europe." - 6th grade History book

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

squeeeb

its not judging. judging is "short people are stupid and can't do math, blondes are dumb."

it's profiling, and that's not a pejorative. is it wrong to say i can tell someone is chinese because they have high cheekbones and generally rounder faces, not all the time but in general? how am i judging them?

germans have high foreheads. does that mean all of them? no, it does not. but they do, it's a physical trait, and when you are travelling around the world and see a guy with a high forehead, it's a damn good chance he is german. in kenya i learned that a certain tribe (i forgot who) have thin noses, that's how kenyans tell them apart, i learned this from a kenyan. they told me which tribe has nappy hair, which has a thin nose, etc.

wanna get even more esoteric? ask anyone who's been in the military if they can tell an officer from an enlisted in civilian clothes. 99% can, because of how they dress, how they act.

army guys can tell who is in the special forces because of how he dresses and acts.

it's not judging, it's just recognizing, consciously or unconsciously, different groups of people. a simple, interesting thing, something fun to talk about.

wanna know how to tell an american outside of america? the shoes.

damn.

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onward to mayhem!

Jetée

The way you explained your reasoning, even though it was necessary at all in my opinion, would make abaya (our resident sociological anthropologist) fall madly in love with you. Hell, even I'm wondering what you are doing as a single man.

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

mixedmedia

Isn't that top pic Ashley Judd?

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
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Shell

...Squeeb, dippin was not referring to physical features of various nationalities that we're born with. He's steroptyping American women as wearing more make-up, "painting" their permed hair blond, and wearing baggy clothes and padded bras....as opposed to Brazilians and Europeans

__________________
..."Say what you think. Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" ~ Dr. Seuss

dippin

How am I stereotyping? I am not doing any oversimplifications, or saying that it is universal, nor am I making any sort of value judgment. Beauty standards are what they are, and if you think any of that is inherently negative, that is your problem, not mine.

The idea that any comment about a group of people is inherently stereotypical is silly. We can talk about general cultural differences, and doing so doesn't mean one is reducing a complex collective picture to a caricature of reality.

In fact, we talk about collective aspects of groups of people all the time, without reducing them to that difference or ignoring variation within a group.

Ignoring that there are cultural differences across nations and groups is ethnocentric at the least.

Now, whatever made you feel so disrespected from my post is entirely in your head. I've yet to see how noting that American women, on average, use more make up or more hair products than women in the largest European nations is some how stereotyping or offensive. If for no other reason than the fact that it is an observation that is backed up by actual market data!

Similarly, fashion (and Im not talking about haute couture here, but every day style) is a collective phenomena that can be easily observed and tracked. Or are you going to say that there is no difference between what you'd expect to see in a beach in Destin, FL and what you'd see in Mallorca, Spain?

So, once again, whatever value judgments you got from my posts are all in your head, and I'd appreciate it if you still feel insulted by my post that you actually spell out what you have a problem with, instead of little passive aggressive posts that try to suggest something I did not at any point suggest.

jewels

Yes, it is. And I've seen that movie.

Perhaps a more suitable word would be overgeneralizing? If American women wear too much makeup and color their hair, then it follows that European women bathe once a week and use perfume to cover their body odor. Gimme a break. The idea that any comment about a group of people is anything other than complacency and fosters biases is ludicrous.

If your proclamation makes something a beauty standard, that's definitely not Shell's problem.

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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Shell

...jewels, thank you.

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..."Say what you think. Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" ~ Dr. Seuss

little_tippler

Hi,

I wasn't going to come back to this thread but I decided I should. You'll notice my first response was actually light hearted, at least to me. I said I thought the assumption was silly to a degree, though I can accept you may be able to distinguish some women's origin at times. Sure, some are more obvious. I just don't tend to agree with sweeping generalizations. I don't like to perpetuate the notion that American women are this or European women are that. More and more, everything is mixed, intertwined, connected.

I then proceeded to go to the trouble to get some pics in the thread, which I thought could be fun, and even interesting. Sorry if I couldn't get pics of only run of the mill women, but models are also just people so I thought, since this wasn't such a serious topic, that they'd do ok. I'm not sure where you're reading that anyone is pissed off. Maybe some people don't totally agree, is all. I don't think you need to feel so defensive about it.

I find that the direct responses to my first post are pretty harsh and do not accept my point of view almost at all. So maybe I'm the one who should feel slighted. After all, I'm one of the 'European women' being spoken about here and I don't like being lumped into a group and have people brag how they can tell where I'm from without my even opening my mouth. But maybe I'm an exception. I have been perfectly fluent in English since I was 4 and so I possibly don't have that whole mouth and jaw shape that conventional European people have :\ I realize some people are 'praising' 'European women'. But there is just something strange about the whole idea.

I'm sorry if this thread has devolved, through any fault of my own. I also want to say that I appreciate your contributions to the TFP. I think more than anything, there has just been a small misunderstanding, which can easily be put right.

I could have done this by PM but I prefer to be open about things.

Also, if anyone is interested, here is the list of nationalities for the girls I posted - maybe it will give some of you a laugh.

1 Portuguese
2 American
3 Russian
4 Ukranian
5 Dutch
6 Brazilian
7 Italian
8 Italian
9 Canadian
10 American

(yes, two girls are neither)

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

Jetée

Was #2 Megan Fox, 'cause that's the only one I even hinted at guessing.

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Nisses

I think almost every time I hear "European women", it ends up being about Polish/Czech/Roumanian/... women.
Because that is the geographical area of women this, again, is about.

I gather that a lot of guys from the US consider Sweden/Denmark an entity on it's own, UK to still be the backyard of America, and Italy/Spain/... to be a weirdly distant latino colony?


And yes, they do tend to have a very frank and direct approach towards men. If you only like to be the hunter on the prowl for women, you might actually feel threatened around those parts
However, as always, not every one of them is like this.

__________________
Moderation should be moderately moderated.

dippin

who said anything about "too much?"

Again, you are seeing things you want to see. My original post only said that in my experience Ive noticed that American women use more make up than European women, something I backed up with relevant statistics. The idea that that makes them "superficial" as shell accused me of claiming is no where in my posts, and comes straight from any associations she can make. Similarly, the idea that it is "too much" make up comes solely from your head, as I never said that either.

And the idea that any statement about a group of people is inherently biased is incredibly shortsighted. Anthropology, sociology, history and even a part of economics all are based on the notion that a society is more than just the sum of its individual parts, and that there is something bigger that comes from societal interaction, something that we can only notice at the macro level. You know, culture, basically. There are a number of things that we can say about any group of people without implying that everyone in that group believes or behaves a certain way, but saying that a majority do.

We can talk about how French culture is more exclusionary of cultural symbols and styles that are associated with lower classes given its aristocratic history, like Bourdieu wrote about when he talked about certain things being class markers, and we can talk about how in the US, its more egalitarian history of small land owners has made so called "omnivores" more high status, as we can see from the rise of hip hop fashion, and as such American fashion is more accepting of informality.

And we can talk about a multitude of over things that are true in the macro level without necessarily being true for every individual. We can talk about hip hop being more popular in the US than in Europe and talk about the influence of black culture on American music, of soccer being more popular in Europe than the US given how it was spread by the British at a time the US was out of its sphere of influence, and that cosmetics are more popular in the US than in Europe. The idea that I defended a certain beauty standard, that I implied that the American beauty standard is superficial, or inferior, are not present in any of my posts, and are conclusions that she (and you) are drawing without any backing from my posts.

Crack

Well hell, I come back to check on this thread and damn. Look what happened. Perhaps I was a little too vague when I wrote the thread, I guess what it really comes down to is that can tell when a woman is not American. No voice, strip her naked if you will (hell, I'd prefer it!), white room with no windows, no movement.. blah blah blah, I can look at her and with a 95% certainty tell you if she is American or not. Its all about the face. Can I tell you she is from Belgium, or Norway, or Ukraine? Hell no. But "European" yes.

I meant no disrespect when I made this thread, perhaps I didn't understand that "European" was not something you would want to be lumped into. Perhaps calling someone "European" is an insult in Europe? These are things I need to meditate on.

After careful meditation I have come to the conclusion that from now on I will not call women from Europe "European Women". I will call them "Non-American Women" Although this might cause problems with the Asian/African demographic, so I am just not sure what to call anyone anymore. Obviously I can't just call all women -"women" if I am referring to the location of said women.

I am going to be honest here when I say that Bobby is the cause for all of this! I opened his thread here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/titty-b...04-lineup.html
(NSFW!)
If you watch the video herein, pause it at the 20 second mark (before they start to get naked) I KNEW that they were all from European countries. They didn't talk, they barely moved... I don't know, it's just in their faces.

Okay, that sounds horrible, I am not being racist here! I think I am just going to suht up for now.

__________________
Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx

vanblah

Certainly, there are physical (physiognomical??) traits that are more common among people (not just women) in their respective regions. It's definitely something that can be attributed to genetics and possibly facial muscles due to local languages although probably very subtle in this regard. General health and diet are also a factor.

I've also noticed that these "features" are more pronounced in Eastern European countries. Although, it's not always the case. I'm sure if I visited one of these countries I'd see just as many people who don't have these features ... maybe.

EDIT: In the case of models and actresses they are specifically chosen to look like an ideal (ie. they all look the same). They are as generic as possible. So unless the advertiser or movie is going for that "Eastern European Look," for instance, it's pretty difficult to tell. Even models from Russia or other parts of Eastern Europe who have the particular features usually attributed to that region can be made to look generic with makeup; lighting and Photoshop.

Not to say that American women or Western European women are generic (far from it); but those places generally set the bar for "what we want to see."

Nisses

Crack: not an insult at all.

Just that the geography is so diverse that you go 500 miles in either direction and you'll wind up with noticeable difference in facial features, taken on average.
Something that as far as I gather in the US is unheard of.

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Moderation should be moderately moderated.

Xerxys

This.

... and ROFL. I do not pretend to know where anyione is froom simply by looking at them, except of course, Crompsin's writing, I can spot it a mile away.

jewels

Perspective with apologies. Somehow, the inference was there based on the demeanor of your entire post.

Apologies, again. I didn't appreciate the tone of your second post and thusly responded to certain attacks you made on others' opinions and thought processes which I perceived as rather rude.

When you're right you're right, what can I say?

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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

Fremen

I thought every body was from Africa, once upon a time.

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Reese

I wanted to make this reply a few days ago when the thread was fresh but I got a little busy remodeling my house.

Pictures can be deceiving. One of the women pictured is Snejana Onopka. She's Ukrainian but in the picture I would have guessed French. You can look at her wiki and see a picture of her with no/little makeup un-posed and she looks absolutely nothing like the picture LT posted.

LT, I don't think it''s a bad thing that people can distinguish American from European. I mean, we can instantly distinguish Asians from Caucasians. Hell, Chinese and Japanese can tell each other apart so I'm told. I think I can tell a black person from the Greater Antilles from a black African or an African American slave descendant. It's definitely not fool proof but assuming someone's origin is not racist.

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