This is one of those stereotypes that is totally correct. Take a casual stroll about any Russian town and the typical woman you see would be considered “very cute” or “pretty” in places like the Germany, the UK or the US. And one or two of them will have supermodel looks. That kind of talent you will only get in a few select places in the US like Santa Barbara, parts of LA, etc. You also see unremarkable lanky, unkempt dudes with solid 8’s whereas in the US they will either be with a fat white chick or a 5/6 Asian.
I recall some studies been done about this which basically came to the same conclusion. Women from Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Poles, etc) being rated as the most attractive among whites. In my experience I’d also add Norwegians (Swedes are too Germanic-plain) and Bulgarians to the list.
Why is this the case? The eXile theory of “dyevolution” posits that this stemmed from the USSR’s huge manpower losses in WW2. The theory goes that in the postwar period, with sex ratios absurdly skewed, only the hotter part of the beauty bell curve was able to find husbands. While under other circumstances we could have expected some degree of “soft polygamy” in which alpha males develop harems (or formal polygamy, as practiced by traditional Islamic societies with lots of inter-tribal warfare) this was not the case in the USSR what with strict Stalinist social mores and controls.
The theory is superficially attractive but false. This pussy paradise was only actual for a single generation i.e. 1945-65, i.e. not enough time to make any substantial genetic level impact given reversion to the mean. Besides it wouldn’t explain countries like Bulgaria or the Czech Republic, where demographic wartime losses were minimal, or even Poland, where half the 6mn deaths were of Jews and the other 3mn were of civilians (i.e., not as overwhelmingly skewed towards young males as military deaths). On the other hand, German military deaths relative to their male population were no lower than those of the Russians, and in addition many of their POW’s were in prison until the mid-1950’s. But German chicks haven’t become particularly beautiful. They remain much the same as they always have: Plain and stolid Gretchen. In addition, the high reputations of Slavic women precedes the 20th century anyway. Napoleon’s mistresses were Polish. The Ottoman Sultans filled their harems with East Slavic women. One of them, Roxelana, became very politically influential.
Of course there are plenty of other possible explanations. For a start Eastern Europe, and Ukraine in particular, was always pretty violent. Then again was it exceptionally so by medieval standards? After the Viking period, Scandinavia was very peaceful, and their women are considered very beautiful and desirable too (I for one fully agree with Norway’s inclusion in that group). I think Chinese and Korean women are prettier than average too and these have consistently been very peaceful and “beta” societies. Maybe Slavic EE women just dress better and take more effort to look more feminine? That is certainly part of the equation, but even if Anglo/Germanic women started (re)adopting these same habits, the difference would not be bridged. So this must remain an open question…
I think that Ukrainian chicks in particular are hot, and this is due to the fact that there was much mixing between different types of populations over the millennia. In Antiquity you had Greeks along the coast, Iranic tribes in the steppe, and proto-Slavs in the forests and swamps. In Late Antiquity you had influx of Goths, who actually lived in Crimea until eighteenth or even nineteenth century. The Huns, and other successive invaders from the steppe made their way to the steppe fringe in Southern Ukraine, and beyond, this continued until the High Middle Ages. Then there are the Scandinavians and whomever they brought with them from the north, Baltic people, Ugric people. Also peasants, small nobles, adventurers from Rzeczpospolita and Muscovy finding refuge from the oppression of magnates along the Dnieper. Caucasians running from the armies of Tamerlan. Tatars escaping their Khans. Italian Merchants, Byzantine priests.
Did I forget to mention anyone?
This may well be part of the reason (incidentally I agree that Ukrainians are to East Slavs what East Slavs are to whites in general) but why would being an ethnic melting pot in general select for female beauty? After all there are many cases where that doesn’t happen. The classical example is White Anglo-East Asian pairing which IMO tend to inherit the worse features of each (dark eyes; stronger chins).
I completely disagree regarding Eurasians. Having grown up in the Bay Area, I always thought that the halfie girls I knew were some of the most attractive. Google “Kristin Kreuk” — her white ancestry is not Anglo, but Dutch, but the principle is the same. I think they are often more attractive because they are more likely to have round eyes (lacking an epicanthic fold or having a less extreme version) than East Asians and more likely to have high cheekbones than Western Europeans — both very attractive and feminine traits.
Mixed-race Brazilians and Colombians are commonly regarded to be as some of those attractive in the world as well. I think the reason for this is because outbreeding weeds out some of the more extreme and bizarre traits that have evolved in isolation among certain groups — hooked noses, broad noses, flat noses, epicanthic folds, kinky hair, etc — creating a more intermediate and “average” set of phenotypes.
I haven’t been to Russia, but I’ve spent some time in Poland, and the cities I visited definitely had the highest per capita percentage of hot women I have ever seen. Part of it is due to presentation. Most women are slender, have long hair, and dress very fashionably — usually with skirts, dresses or jeans combined with ballet flat shoes. The genetic element that works in their favor are their prominent cheekbones, which can be found in greater frequency in Polish women than among Western European women. However, I haven’t seen any evidence showing that Polish women are more heterozygous than the English or French. Autosomal admixture graphs that I’ve seen show that ethnic Russians (at least those sampled) have non-trivial Northeast Asian ancestry, but that Latvians and Belorussians don’t: http://i.imgur.com/oTrL2.png I’m not sure about Poles.
The children of unlike parents benefit from heterosis, aka hybrid vigor. If disparate races have produced a well-mixed hybrid population many generations ago, there wouldn’t be any hybrid vigor in it today. Mexicans and Uzbeks are two examples of old mixed-race populations. I wouldn’t call them great-looking.
This is indeed probably a matter of individual tastes, because…
I think they are often more attractive because they are more likely to have round eyes (lacking an epicanthic fold or having a less extreme version) than East Asians and more likely to have high cheekbones than Western Europeans — both very attractive and feminine traits.
… I don’t think epicanthic folds look bad on East Asians at all. 🙂
PS. I also live in the Bay Area currently.
PPS. Let’s not bring celebrities into this. You can find great looking women among almost all ethnicities. We’re considering averages here.
Also, I haven’t seen any evidence that men find dark eyes to be less attractive than light eyes. Although I think the world would be poorer without women with light hair and eyes, such features are not a factor in determining attractiveness for me. It’s more an issue of facial features, hair texture, hip/waist proportionality, good skin quality, tight body, etc. I don’t think I’m an outlier in that regard, but I’d like to see a study.
Also, brown eyes might be a trait with “incomplete dominance”, meaning it’s possible to get an intermediate trait between brown and blue while inheriting a copy of each. For example, Kristin Kreuk has green eyes.
Currently, two genes are known that have a strong effect on eye color. Known variation in those two genes doesn’t explain hazel or grey eyes or variations in the shade of blue, green or brown eyes, so there must be other genes as well. For a layman-friendly description of eye color genetics and a little app that you can play around with to predict the eye color of your potential future offspring, see:
http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhibits/what-color-eyes-will-your-children-have
Yes, you forgot probably the biggest foreign input into the Ukrainian stock, one which for obvious reasons has been deliberately ignored by Ukrainian historiography: Romanian (Vlach) northward migration along the Carpathians (i.e. the Hutsuls and Russyns are basically Slavicised Romanians), and the eastwards one (the vast majority fof the settled population of the greater Transdniester area of Novorossiya was constituted by Romanians when the area was incorporated into the Russian Empire).
EE women are, on average, thinner than women in the west and take care to always look feminine but what makes them exceptional… imo the high cheekbones!
I agree with that.
I think that Ukrainian chicks in particular are hot
Solely from pictures I’ve seen, since I’ve never been there, but I find Czech women to be quite extraordinary, too.
Being Czech I think Slovakia is better in this department. 😉
Feminism has made fewer inroads in Russia/Ukraine/Belarus than in Western Europe. Feminism tells women to care less about their looks, to be hostile to men.
It seems to me that the more influence parents have on their children’s mate choice, the less selection there would be for beauty. You’d expect parents to care less about looks than young people do themselves. Historically, arranged marriages were less common in Europe than in the Middle East, India or East Asia. That may help explain why women in most of the world are trying to look more European now. Among Africans gender roles are reversed, women are providers, men are ornaments. I shouldn’t knock arranged marriages too hard: all else being equal, I’d trust parents to be better at selecting for intelligence, the ability to work hard, self-control.
If there is a beauty gap between Slavic and Western European women (and I guess there is), can it be wholly explained by the late advent and slow penetration of feminism in Eastern Europe? I don’t know.
Again don’t think so. Historically EE reputation for beauty far predated feminism. Now feminism does ruin looks but it has much the same effect as malnutrition does on intelligence. For the most part it is the women who aren’t all that pretty in the first place who deeply embrace feminism (much like the elites have always been well fed and it was the proles and peasants whose IQ was heavily suppressed).
Deep parental involvement in marriage tends to be catastrophic. Here I have to part ways and say that traditional Christian European arrangements were far superior to what you find elsewhere. In India/ME (and European royalty) arranged marriages were (are) typically within-kin with all the attendant genetic problems this causes. The Chinese were somewhat more reasonable about it but this in the longterm still led to clannishness and a ridiculously high degree of filial piety (some filial piety is of course good but not to the extent that it reached in China). Meanwhile the people’s within the Hajnal Line in Europe (i.e. with the highest degree of out-of-kin marriages) tend to have both the highest IQ’s in Europe and highest levels of social cohesion in the world.
Yes, clannishness is incompatible with large-scale social cohesion.
I’m not denying that there is a negative side to inbreeding, I’m just saying that there is a positive side too. If done well, inbreeding can be a net positive for the participants. When people make an effort to keep wealth and power within a family, they’re also keeping the talents that led to the acquisition of wealth and power within that family. The founders of royal dynasties, of the Rothschild banking dynasty that Nial Ferguson wrote about, of other types of successful families, must have been talented individuals. Their descendants approached those guys’ genetic inheritance the way race horse owners approach champion horses’ genetic inheritance. As I said before, if no-pedigree horses could win races, they would have conquered that sport long ago. For very long periods of time in many countries the people at the very top were heavily inbred. It’s hard to argue with success. But yes, when done badly, inbreeding can be a net negative.
European royalty had a Middle Eastern attitude to family despite a near complete absence of Middle Eastern genes. And it goes beyond royalty. Any sort of an elite starts to behave this way. I remember the Bushes being described as “WASP Corleones” in press. They display an un-WASPey attitude to family. FDR, a guy from an extremely elite background, was married to another Roosevelt. I don’t know how common inbreeding was among old New England elite, but I know that they were clannish, extended-family-oriented in other ways. A person of Euro background who reaches an elite level and doesn’t switch to a Middle Eastern attitude to family ends up being a one-hit wonder. Royalty is descended from people who weren’t just successful, but who made an effort to perpetuate that success by switching to an extended family-oriented set of morals. The successful guys who were unwilling or unable to do it wouldn’t have created lasting dynasties.
Can this sort off stuff be bad for society as a whole? Sure. But it can be great for the families who are doing it. That’s why it’s being done.
“Again don’t think so. Historically EE reputation for beauty far predated feminism.”
I don’t know that. I’m not saying it didn’t and I’m not saying it did. I lack data. Yes, several Ottoman Sultans had Slavic wives, but gentlemen aren’t the only ones out there who prefer blondes, harem owners have always preferred them too. And Ukraine just happened to be the repository of blondes that was closest to Istanbul. A half-Viking chick named Eudokia Ingerina, daughter of a Varangian guardsman named Inger, was the wife of one Byzantine emperor and a mistress of another in the 9th century.
Did foreign travelers to Russia say anything about this in past centuries? The Englishmen who dealt with Ivan IV, that Herberstein guy? I don’t know.
Perhaps lusty masters chasing after the attractive serfs and peasants… a Slavic version of “brown sugar”.
But feudalism was much harsher in West Europe from 1000-1600 or so, whereas Russian feudalism was only very harsh from 1650-early 1800’s. Besides serfdom didn’t reach deep into the north, the Urals, Siberia, and some border regions.
I guess it depends on what you consider attractive as Swedish women are generally regarded the most beautiful in the world.
Anders Behring Breivik was registered on an Eastern European female dating website and dated a Belarusian women for a period who lived with him in his 2 bedroom flat in Norway.
http://charter97.org/en/news/2012/1/5/46443/
Are Siberian girls hotter than those in western Russia?
The simplest answer would be genetic drift. Besides, beauty canons for women can change a lot; think of Rubens.
Beauty is personal. Especially with the opposite sex. Some like blonds, Others like brunettes. Some like them big, others like the petite. It really is personal but it seems that childhood experiences do have an influence what maybe shows up in AK liking Eastern Europeans.
ps. Do you really like Koreans? Can’t say that i ever seen an attractive one.
You are simply incorrect here. Slavic women have a reputation for beauty that is extremely prevalent and goes well beyond my own preferences/prejudices.
Also beauty is not very personal at all because with the exception of a few fetishists pretty much every right-thinking male agrees on the desirability of certain traits such as svelte body, hourglass figure, big (not fat!) breasts, almost eyes, high chin, delicate nose, etc.
Korean women are indistinguishable to me from North Chinese chicks. Both are far from as uniformly beautiful as EE’s but more so than Germanics (here I submit that the opinion is more personal as quite a lot of whites do not like the aesthetics of Mongoloids period). On the other hand you would be correct about Japanese. While they look after themselves just as well as other East Asians with the exception of a couple they’ve all looked plain to me.
I don’t know what the explanation is for it but I find Slav women utterly beautiful and so do most people I know.
I would just that during the Soviet period when the only east European women most westeners saw were athletes the image of east European women in Britain (Russians especially) was quite poor (a few people like me who went to the ballet knew better). No negative stereotype has been overturned more rapidly and more completely.
A couple of thoughts ….
While I’m old enough to remember only the last decade or so of the Cold War, maybe things were different earlier, it was most definitely NOT my impression that Russian women had a reputation for beauty, at least not in the United States. The common stereotype was of the squat, poorly dressed Babushka type, who would look middle-aged by 30.
As for the World War II theory, something that’s been largely forgotten today is that Britain suffered tremendous losses in World War I, with nearly all the dead being young or youngish men. Yet as far as I know there was no metaphorical explosion of beauty among British women a generation later.* Similarly, Sweden and Brazil both have reputations for producing beautiful women, and neither country has been in a major war for many generations. Also, going back to Russia, I would imagine that a whole lot of Russian women died in World War II, what with much of the country being devastated by fighting. It would have been impossible for civilians to have gotten out of the way all of the time.
* = nor did Paraguay produce the world’s most beautiful women a generation after the War of the Triple Alliance
East Asia was one of the most brutally warlike regions in the world, not as you said, a peaceful beta society. Every 100 years of peace was punctuated by an equal time of war, chaos and death. Maybe not Korea but definitely the rest of Asia.
Before 200 BC, it was the Warring States Era for over 1000 years. Then the brutal Qin. Then a violent 10 year succession to the Han. Then war against the Xiongnu (Huns). 200 years of peace. Then 100 years of Three Kingdoms, 200 of barbarian invasions, 200 of more civil war… then you have Sui. 30 years of war, then Tang. 300 years of peace, then 100 years of war, then Song, 200 years of peace, then 50 year war with the Mongols, then a 10 year rebellion and the establishment of the Ming, then war with Japan (on Korean soil), then Manchus… the male population was selected for traits that would be more likely to survive in war – physical and mental agility.
Manchus were an interesting part that gave selection pressure. After being conquered by the Manchu, they killed off tens of millions of Chinese males, forced them to wear humiliating braids (which were women’s hairstyles), head shaving (which was also humiliating because in traditional Chinese culture you were NEVER supposed to cut your hair since it was a part of your body and a gift from your parents; instead you were supposed to wind it up and cover it with a hat for males, but some warriors let their hair flow) and enforced a strict morality; whereas homosexuality, premarital sex, etc. were merely frowned on before, during the Qing dynasty with the Manchus they were punishable by death. It also happened that the Qing dynasty was very long, almost 300 years. That selected for obedient traits, rather than the traits that previous dynasties selected for. If you don’t believe me, take a look at what the ideal man was in the Han Dynasty
http://pic18.nipic.com/20120111/9138721_151332229178_2.jpg
and in the Qing dynasty:
http://t1.baidu.com/it/u=3218333901,2255731282&fm=0&gp=0.jpg
Both are warriors but which one looks far more aggressive and masculine?
Was going to compose a long response, but I’ll condense it all into “this is true.” 😉
I do think that a more traditional sense of femininity has a lot to do with it. Russian culture generally considers gender a binary thing, unlike the postmodern/postreality West. In traditional Russia (and most ex-CCCP countries), it remains acceptable for women to be women and for men to be men. Universal and literal truths aren’t denied with such elaborate sophistry and relativism as in the West. Academic departments aren’t needed to explain away troublesome reality.
Women of most social, economic and educational classification in Russia (and most ex-CCCP countries), are allowed to be feminine. And lo and behold, that makes them sexy.
Very true. Russian and Ukrainian women enjoy being women. This was once the case in the United States too, a couple of generations ago. But in the American case there was the baggage of the second-rate status of women. It seems that in legitimately struggling against inequality, Western feminists have confused eqality with sameness and damaged femininity by making women more like men (my wife and our female Russian friends always see deep underlying mysogeny in the feminists they have encountered). It’s like if blacks had battled racism by not only fighting against discrimination but also by creating the image of a “liberated” black having pale skin, straight hair, and no hint of ebonics.
Also, in Russia, feminism has the taint of being associated with Sovietism and thus is seen by many as provincial and old-fashioned.
***Take a casual stroll about any Russian town ***
I certainly get that impression based on watching the women lining up for the various Olympic track events. The Ukrainian and Russian girls are invariably stunning, with their high cheek bones.
Some examples from recent Olympic high jump and pole vault champions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka_Vla%C5%A1i%C4%87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chicherova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelena_Isinbayeva
And why are Russian men so thick and stupid?
No one here is talking about your average English woman why is this?
In England being fat is now being accepted as being beautiful. We have many fat pop stars now.
II think this happened because Slavic women were the amazons that the Greeks mention in their mythology , they have found evidence of women warriors in tombs in Ukraine,Northern Russia and in Turkey,when they invaded a town they took away the men who look better and have babies from them since these women were not married,they did this for several hundred years and the the result was a lot of beautiful people.