Bias in opinion of beauty from older people vs. younger people?

[quantumhorizon]

This is a very interesting thing I have observed. It’s from my perspective but I think it may apply to others as well.

 

I have felt for some time that as a black “girly” male, I didn’t really look feminine. I was the only person in my family to have proclaimed teeth which were yellow, which some viewed as really masculine. It’s also not very common among Africans in the West. Also my unclear eyes and quite dark skin made me uncomfortable.

To some this makes me look like I have a low self-esteem and probably caused interaction problems with others but it was the chicken and egg conundrum. I wasn’t really concerned about this until others from bullies thinking I looked too African and mocked me for an Indian accent (I genuinely don’t but they did that because I was black ) to classmates asking why my eyes were red.

 

This never made me feel bad, but I still felt it would be better to be lighter and feminine.  Surprisingly my mother agreed that I should get braces in the future, but not surprisingly enough, it wasn’t for the same reasons I had. When we asked the orthodontist, dentist, and hygienist they all thought they were perfectly straight. I also asked my extended family when visiting Kenya regularly; they didn’t see anything wrong with not just teeth but my eyes. They said I was “brainwashed by whites” which kind of made me laugh.

 

So I tried to accept this opinion but contradictory opinions occurred when I was with my peers from another school. My friends and acquaintances would discuss on a on and off basis attractive people both male and female and when I asked them “Do you think I’m attractive?” They answered honestly. “I think as a feminine guy, you’re teeth make you a bit too masculine”. Most young people thought my teeth weren’t that great but they didn’t treat me any less because of it.

 

I truly became confused. Why were young people specifically who I didn’t share my discomforts with my appearance tell me exactly what I thought was wrong while older people 25-50 tell me I was fine?

 

The only thing I could think of was that bias was involved.  It didn’t really make sense that older people thought that looks weren’t important because some of them like the orthodontist were involved in correcting cosmetic appearance.  It had to be bias. Particularly, my family was biased because as a black African family, they expected me to as a black male be masculine looking and act masculine. I even remember answering a question from my cousin about going back to Kenya and I said “I don’t want to be Kenyan. I would rather renounce citizenship and live in the West”. “But you will always be Kenyan”.  My friends on the other hand, view me as a feminine, “white” person who was black because of who I presented myself as; this is why perhaps they weren’t impacted by bias as much as my family when asking about attraction.

 

What do you think about this? Have you experienced anything similar?