Perception of skin color in sub-Saharan Africa

 

Beyoncé Knowles, 2012. Is skin bleaching consistent with indigenous African values? (source)

A Zambian-born sociologist visited his home village with his white American wife and two of their children. Having lost his way, he asked an elderly lady for directions. She gladly told him:

But then she said, addressing his boys in the car, in the Tumbuka bantu African language:

"Monile asungwana, muli uli?" ("Greetings girls, how are you?")

At first, the author was flustered as he assumed the woman could not see very well since the boys were sitting in the car and their full bodies and clothes were concealed from her. The author corrected her. She didn't seem perturbed at all. He thought to himself how could she or anyone not see that these boys had no breasts, were not wearing earrings, blouses, or dresses. His pubescent fifteen year-old had even the beginnings of dark whiskers around his chin. The author dismissed the incident and did not reflect on it again. But a couple of times again, total strangers at a glance, while the two boys were sitting in the vehicle, referred to them in the Tumbuka language as "asungwana" or "those girls". What surprised him was that these comments were not made in a mean way or out of visual perceptual error. (Tembo, 2010, p. 5)

He came back to the United States and began writing up an article about his visit. For this, he had to select a few photos from the hundreds he had taken of men, women, and children from the village. Only then did the answer to his puzzle dawn on him:

His children, who have quite pronounced features of a Sub-Saharan African, but are light skinned compared to many relatives in the village, stood out in all the group photographs. There was nothing unusual about this obvious reality. But then he noticed something very subtle; all women had lighter glowing ambience to their skins than men although both men and women had dark skin tones. Some women had a definite characteristic glow to their lighter dark skin compared to the other women and the men. (Tembo, 2010, p. 6)

Women are in fact lighter-skinned than men throughout the world, although this sex difference is larger in populations of medium color than in those that are very pale or very dark (Frost, 2007; Madrigal and Kelly, 2006; van den Berghe and Frost, 1986). Girls become lighter-skinned than boys from puberty onward, apparently as part of sexual maturation. For one thing, this post-pubescent lightening correlates in girls with the post-pubescent thickening of subcutaneous fat (Mazess, 1967). For another, it correlates with the digit ratio—a marker of the degree of prenatal estrogenization (Manning et al., 2004).

This sexual dimorphism is paralleled by a traditional tendency to associate women with the lighter end of the local spectrum of complexions. Hence, the ideal woman was said to be "white" in Europe and East Asia, "golden" in South-East Asia, and "red" in sub-Saharan Africa.

The term "red" may puzzle non-Africans. It actually means a reddish-brown-orange complexion, which is the lightest color that occurs locally in normal individuals:

[...] in the Tumbuka bantu African language people describe women's beauty saying: "Mwanakazi mswesi ndiye muwemi comene" which translates as "A woman who is red-skinned is most attractive". This is more accurate than what would be the conventional translation: "A woman who is light skinned is most attractive" (Tembo, 2010, p. 10).

When Africans speak of a beautiful woman, they may describe her as "red" or even "white," thus seeming to emulate European standards of beauty. On this point, Tembo (2010, p. 12) quotes the lyrics of a Zambian song from the 1950s, "Maggie": 

Ndikonda miyendo yako

Ndifiga yako
Maggie ulinso
Mkazi woyera 

A literal translation would be:

I love your legs

Your figure too
Maggie you are also
A white woman 

Woyera does mean "white" but not in an ethnic sense. Maggie is simply an African woman with a naturally light complexion. Tembo argues that Africans and non-Africans alike have misconstrued this indigenous norm of female beauty as something that European colonialism has imposed. While not condoning skin bleaching, he argues that this widespread practice among modern African women is a logical consequence of indigenous aesthetic values.  

A cultural norm for African women?

This female norm is attested in many other sub-Saharan societies: 

Bambara (Mali)

The Bambara are not unmoved by the beauty of a woman's form; they can distinguish a well-formed body from a malformed one, a pretty woman from an ugly one, and they find a coppery skin more attractive than one of ebony black. (Henry, 1910, p. 217)

Tallensi (Ghana)

In skin colour they vary from black through chocolate brown to bronze, which the natives call "red" (bon-ze'e) and regard as the most attractive bodily hue. (Fortes, 1945, p. 7)

Hausa (Nigeria)

Light skin colour, referred to as "red", ranks high in the Hausa criteria of beauty; many variations of colour, from black to a very light reddish brown are seen. (Smith, 1965, p. 264)

Ibo (Nigeria)

In Ibo culture, however, these yellowish or reddish complexions are considered more beautiful than the darker, 'blacker,' complexions. [...] It is true that, in West Africa, government has for many years been identified with pale-skinned Europeans, but the Ibo evidence suggests that preference for paleness of complexion is indigenous. (Ardener, 1954, pp. 71-72)

Azande (Sudan)

Of the women and girls, some with babies, he kept the most beautiful in Zande eyes, those brightest of eye and clearest of skin and with full breasts, for his couch. (Evans-Pritchard, 1937, p. 60)

Berti (Sudan)

Men and women affirm without any hesitation that men are black, hot and hard and women are white, cold and soft. (Holy, 1988, p. 471) 

Somali (Somalia)

Men appreciate women of good height and stature, with good hips and breasts, and plump but not fat. A reddish tinged skin is thought highly of in preference to a dark dull black. (Lewis, 1962, p. 13)

Masai (Kenya, Tanzania)

Further requirements for being regarded as beautiful are an oval face, white teeth, black gums, a skin color as light as possible ... (Merker, 1910, p. 18)

Rundi (Rwanda, Burundi)

Beauty does not count very heavily, but a man is not displeased if people notice that his wife is attractive and well-fleshed, has a long and narrow nose, a light skin, and is somewhat like a cow. (Albert, 1963, p. 203)

Ganda (Uganda)

There is, in respect of the ordinary negroid complexion, a preference for paleness deeply rooted in the Ganda ideal of beauty. [...] The Ganda concept of skin pigmentation considers light coloured complexions to be differing shades of white. A dark brown skin colour is said to be eruyeru, that is, somewhat white. A really brown-reddish-yellow person is said to be mweru = white, which in comparison would be considered to be blonde; and this in the Ganda aesthetic language is considered as red = myufu, the most perfect skin pigmentation. (Lugira, 1970, pp. 34-35)

Nairobi (Kenya)

In the future the increasing use of skin lightening creams such as "Ambi" may eventually reduce the importance of natural skin color. But whatever the case, in Nairobi of the 1960's, as throughout much of Kenya, the lighter "brown" girls are usually considered to be more beautiful than "black" girls — and the more successful prostitutes are invariably "brown." (McVicar, 1969, p. 242) 

Ila, Lunda, Luvale, and Chokwe (Zambia)

Here too words meaning literally "white" are commonly used to refer to light skins though "red" may also be used. Light skins are admired just as much as is shown to occur among the Ibo, and young girls discussing the possible attractions of various young men have often been heard to emphasize "very black" as a point against someone. In the past at least one attraction of a light skin apart from its intrinsic appeal was the fact that the tattooing stood out against it in strong contrast. Very black skins are not infrequently thought to go hand in hand with inherited witchcraft and a light skin to indicate its absence. Dark-skinned women conscious of their possible disadvantage have been heard to tell men that light-skinned women will be found to be sexually unsatisfying. (White, 1954)

Ngoni (Malawi)

Young men say that what they like in a girl is a light skin colour, a pretty face, and the ability to dance and to copulate well. (Barnes, 1951, p. 30)

Kgatla (Botswana)

[...] the generally admired type is a light-skinned girl of somewhat heavy build, with prominent breasts and large, firm buttocks. (Schapera, 1966, p. 46)

A cultural norm for African infants?

Lighter skin is a norm not only for African women but also for African infants. All humans, in fact, are born pale (Grande et al., 1994; Kahlon, 1976; Walsh, 1964). This pallor is a striking contrast to the darker color of adult Africans. In Kenya, newborn infants are often called mzungu ('European' in Swahili), and a new mother may tell her neighbors to come and see her mzungu (Walentowitz, 2008). Among the Tuareg, children are said to be born "white" because of the freshness and moisture of the womb (Walentowitz, 2008). The cause is often thought to be a previous spiritual life:

There is a rather widespread concept in Black Africa, according to which human beings, before "coming" into this world, dwell in heaven, where they are white. For, heaven itself is white and all the beings dwelling there are also white. Therefore the whiter a child is at birth, the more splendid it is. In other words, at that particular moment in a person's life, special importance is attached to the whiteness of his colour, which is endowed with exceptional qualities. (Zahan, 1974, p. 385)

Another Africanist makes the same point: "black is thus the color of maturity [...] White on the other hand is a sign of the before-life and the after-life: the African newborn is light-skinned and the color of mourning is white kaolin" (Maertens, 1978, p. 41).

What skin color originally meant to humans … and to ancestral primates

In sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps more so than elsewhere, we see the older, non-ethnic way of perceiving skin color, where darker skin means an adult male and lighter skin an infant or an adult female. Facial skin color can also signal whether a woman is younger or older, specifically through the degree of luminous contrast between her face and her lips or eyes (Porcheron et al., 2013). In this older perceptual system, skin color might unconsciously prepare the observer for situationally appropriate behavior, e.g., if the observed person is a woman or an infant, the mental threshold is raised for expression of aggressive impulses and lowered for expression of caring (Guthrie, 1970).

The pale skin of infants seems to be the oldest component of this system, being present even in non-human primates. Among langurs, baboons, and macaques, the skin is pink in newborns and almost black in adults (Jay, 1962). The infant coloration apparently does more than help parents find wayward offspring. As it disappears with age, juveniles no longer arouse the same interest, are less often sought out and held by adult females, and cease to arouse defensive reactions from adults when humans approach (Alley, 1980; Booth, 1962; Jay, 1962). 

Although there are no primate species where the adult female has the infant's pink skin, there are some where fur coloration shows this kind of neoteny. Of the eight primate species where adult males and females differ in coat color, seven are characterized by persistence of the infant's lighter coloration into adulthood among females. Interestingly, 63% of these dichromatic species are monogamous, versus only 18% of all primate species (Blaffer-Hrdy and Hartung, 1979). By retaining a lighter infant-like color, the female might better cope with the riskier social environment of monogamy, which makes her more vulnerable to male aggression and to insufficient provisioning because of longer and more continuous cohabitation.

So why aren’t we all light-skinned?

If lighter skin is perceived as a female trait, even to the point of becoming an unconscious input for sex recognition, wouldn’t it be favored by sexual selection? And since skin color is only partly sex-linked, wouldn’t selection for lighter-skinned women end up lightening both sexes? Humans everywhere would have therefore lightened in color right up to the end point of white skin. So why hasn’t this happened?

There are two reasons: (1) sexual selection of women hasn’t been equally strong everywhere; and (2) this sexual selection has been offset to varying degrees by natural selection for darker skin.  

First, sexual selection of women is weaker in sub-Saharan Africa because of the higher polygyny rate: 20-50% of all marriages in the West and Center and 15-30% in the East and South (Pebley and Mbugua, 1989). With too many men competing for too few women, the pressure of sexual selection is shifted from women to men, and selection is thereby weakened for desirable female traits. This may be why high-polygyny populations in sub-Saharan Africa are visibly darker-skinned than low-polygyny ones (Frost, 2008).

Second, sexual selection for lighter female skin can be offset by natural selection for darker skin—as a means to protect against UV and such adverse effects as sunburn, skin cancer, and loss of folic acid. This is especially true in the tropics. Since UV protection becomes less necessary farther away from the equator, Aoki (2002) has argued that the sex difference in skin color should become correspondingly larger, being less constrained by natural selection. In reality, it’s largest at medium latitudes among populations that are medium in skin color (Frost, 2007; Madrigal and Kelly, 2006). It’s actually smaller in white-skinned northern Europeans. This is probably because of a ‘ceiling effect’: in northern Europe, women are less able to become lighter-skinned than men because both sexes are already close to the physiological limit of depigmentation.

 

References

Albert, E. (1963). Women of Burundi, in D. Paulme (ed.) Women of Tropical Africa, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

http://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=zIXYnMZxomUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA179&dq=Women+of+Burundi&ots=8-xGchaphB&sig=HmYrfNEAl6IT_dj8iKs5JUk8ugY#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Alley, T.R. (1980). Infantile colouration as an elicitor of caretaking behaviour in Old World primates, Primates, 21, 416-429.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02390470# 

Aoki, K. (2002). Sexual selection as a cause of human skin colour variation: Darwin’s hypothesis revisited, Annals of Human Biology, 29, 589-608.

http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0301446021000019144 

Ardener, E.W. (1954). Some Ibo attitudes to skin pigmentation, Man, 54, 71-73.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2793760?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102505426581

Barnes, J.A. (1951). Marriage in a Changing Society, Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

Blaffer-Hrdy, S. and J. Hartung. (1979). The evolution of sexual dichromatism among primates, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 50, 450. 

Booth, C. (1962). Some observations on behavior of Cercopithecus monkeys, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 102, 477-487.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1962.tb13654.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false 

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1937). Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/Witchcraft.pdf 

Fortes, M. (1945). The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi, London: Oxford University Press.

Frost, P. (2008). Sexual selection and human geographic variation, Special Issue: Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4),169-191. http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSfrost.pdf

  

Frost, P. (2007). Comment on Human skin-color sexual dimorphism: A test of the sexual selection hypothesis, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 133, 779-781.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20555/abstract 

Grande, R., E. Gutierrez, E. Latorre, and F. Arguelles. (1994). Physiological variations in the pigmentation of newborn infants, Human Biology, 66, 495-507.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41465000?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102505426581

Guthrie, R.D. (1970). Evolution of human threat display organs, Evolutionary Biology, 4, 257-302. 

Henry, J. (1910). L'âme d'un peuple africain, Münster: Aschendorff.

Holy, L. (1988). Gender and ritual in an Islamic society: The Berti of Darfur, Man, 23, 469-487.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2803261?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102505426581 

Jay, P.C. (1962). Aspects of maternal behavior among langurs, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 102, 468-476.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1962.tb13653.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false 

Kahlon, D.P.S. (1976). Age variation in skin color, a study in Sikh immigrants in Britain, Human Biology, 48, 419-428.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41462894?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102505426581

Lewis, I.M. (1962). Marriage and the Family in Northern Somaliland, Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.

Lugira, A.M. (1970). Ganda Art, Kampala: Osasa pub.

 

Madrigal, L. and W. Kelly. (2006). Human skin-color sexual dimorphism: A test of the sexual selection hypothesis, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 132, 470-482.

http://anthropology.usf.edu/faculty/personal/publications/Madrigal%20L%20and%20Kelly%20W%20132%20470%20482%202007.pdf

Maertens, J-T. (1978). Le dessein sur la peau. Essai d'anthropologie des inscriptions tégumentaires, Ritologiques I, Paris: Aubier Montaigne. 

Manning, J.T., Bundred, P.E., and Mather, F.M. (2004). Second to fourth digit ratio, sexual selection, and skin colour, Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 38-50.

http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(03)00082-5/abstract 

Mazess, R.B. (1967). Skin color in Bahamian Negroes, Human Biology, 39, 145-154.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41448835?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102505426581 

McVicar, K.G. (1969). Twilight of an East African Slum, Ann Arbor, University Microfilms (UCLA Dissertation 1968).

http://www.turisticosnoroeste.com.mx/handle/123456789/24102

Merker, M. (1910). Die Masai, Berlin: Reimer.

Pebley, A. R., and W. Mbugua. (1989). Polygyny and Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa. In R. J. Lesthaeghe (ed.), Reproduction and Social Organization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 338-364. 

Porcheron, A., E. Mauger, and R. Russell (2013). Aspects of facial contrast decrease with age and are cues for age perception, PLoS ONE 8(3): e57985

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057985

Schapera, I. (1966). Married Life in an African Tribe, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 

Smith, M.F. (1965). Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa, London: Faber & Faber.

http://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=Rk3KadLaRssC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=Baba+of+Karo:+A+Woman+of+the+Muslim+Hausa&ots=73-7DHwlF_&sig=weagaZ075hTVMCY6nJ5pIo8XtH8#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Tembo, M.S. (2010). The Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies. Eurocentric Destruction of Indigenous Conceptions: the Secret Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies.

http://people.bridgewater.edu/~mtembo/menu/articles/AfricanBeautyRevisedMarch162010.pdf

van den Berghe, P. L. and P. Frost. (1986). Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism, and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture co-evolution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9, 87-113.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1986.9993516

Walentowitz, S. (2008). Des êtres à peaufiner. Variations de la coloration et de la pigmentation du nouveau-né, in J-P. Albert, B. Andrieu, P. Blanchard, G. Boëtsch, and D. Chevé (eds.) Coloris Corpus, (pp. 113-120), Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008. 

Walsh, R.J. (1964). Variation in the melanin content of the skin of New Guinea natives at different ages, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 42, 261-265.

White, C.M.M. (1954). Correspondence, Man, 54,147.

Zahan, D. (1974). White, Red and Black: Colour Symbolism in Black Africa, in A. Portmann and R. Ritsema (eds.) The Realms of Colour, Eranos 41 (1972), 365-395, Leiden: Eranos. 

Skin color and the menstrual cycle

 

The female torso visibly reddens towards the end of the menstrual cycle. Do men unconsciously pick up on this visual cue? (Figure from Edwards and Duntley, 1949)

 

Women vary in skin color over the menstrual cycle. From mid-cycle on, their skin steadily reddens because of an increase in blood flow that peaks in the day or two preceding menstruation.This cyclical “blushing” mainly affects the torso:

[…] these cyclic variations in blood flow were observed over the entire trunk and at least the upper parts of the limbs. There is suggestive evidence that the face and the hands and feet may share in these changes. (Edwards and Duntley, 1949)

Facial skin, especially around the eyes, shows a similar cyclical change, according to two questionnaire surveys: 

[…] about half the women questioned had some increase in skin pigmentation, which was noted in every case in the latter days of the menstrual cycle and in some cases during menstruation also. The others showed no skin changes whatsoever.

[…] The site most commonly showing pigmentation changes was the skin around the eyes. Next most frequently affected were the areola of the nipple and the perioral skin. The forehead, axilla, and abdomen were affected in less than one-third of the "positive" subjects. (McGuiness, 1961) 

In answer to the questionnaire, 18 women (62%) consistently noticed darkening of the peri-ocular skin towards the end of the menstrual cycle, i.e. immediately prior to the onset of menstruation; of these, three also noticed darkening of the nipple areolae, two the forehead skin and one the peri-oral skin. (Snell and Turner, 1966)

Snell and Turner (1966) confirmed these observations by measuring the percentage of light reflected by facial skin, although the cyclical variation was rather small. Unlike the torso, the face doesn’t redden towards the end of the cycle. Instead, it becomes browner through increased melanocyte activity:

The results from the skin reflectance readings did not show any great changes. The readings obtained from the cheek and lower eyelid indicated that the melanin content of the skin in these regions tended to rise in the later part of the cycle in many of the women. 

[…] The melanocytes of the anterior abdominal wall skin over the linea alba showed no changing pattern of activity at different phases of the menstrual cycle.

[…] It was concluded that a proportion of normal women, especially dark-skinned brunettes, have darkening of the facial skin during the later days of the menstrual cycle and this mainly involves the peri-ocular skin. (Snell and Turner, 1966) 

Does this cyclical variation provide men with a means to assess female fertility? An unconscious means, to be sure. Pierre van den Berghe thought so, but I ignored his gentle prodding and avoided the subject, all the more so because a search of the ethnographic literature failed to turn up any awareness in any human society of this cyclical change. In contrast, many societies have been keenly aware that women are fairer-skinned and men darker-skinned, often to the point of making this sex difference an artistic convention (van den Berghe and Frost, 1986; Frost, 1988; Tegner, 1992).

One research team has tried to find out whether men pick up on this cyclical variation:

Here, in an initial pilot study, we test the hypothesis that changes in female facial skin coloration across the menstrual cycle could be one of the signals that men have adapted to in order to assess female fertility. Spectrophotometric measurements of the facial skin color of normally ovulating Caucasian women (aged 24–29 years) were collected in the late follicular and midluteal phase of their menstrual cycle. Facial images were also taken in both sessions and judged for attractiveness and health by a panel of German men (aged 16–37 years). In line with Roberts et al. (2004), our results show that men perceive women in the late follicular phase to be significantly more attractive and healthier than those in the midluteal phase. However, we did not detect any significant differences in objective measurements of skin color between the two phases. (Samson et al., 2011)

This study suffers from a few flaws. The authors measured skin reflectance on the forehead and the cheeks, yet these body sites are less involved in darkening and lightening of female skin over the menstrual cycle. It would have been better to measure skin reflectance around the eyes (although premenstrual peri-ocular darkening might have likewise been absent in the fair-skinned German participants). Better yet, this study should have focused not on the face but on the torso, since that body region is the one most affected by this cyclical variation. We should also keep in mind that men unconsciously use two different aspects of female pigmentation for gender recognition. One is the lighter skin of a woman’s face. The other is the higher contrast between facial skin color and eye/lip color (Russell, 2009; Russell, 2010; Porcheron et al., 2013; see also Dupuis-Roy et al., 2009). This contrast effect might be weakened by the premenstrual darkening of skin around a woman’s eyes.

A more recent study has corroborated that men prefer faces of ovulating women to those of premenstrual women (Bobst and Lobmaier, 2012). It concludes that subtle changes in face shape are responsible, although changes in skin color cannot be ruled out. In fact, if men can respond to such subtle changes in face shape, they should also be able to respond to changes in facial color that are no less subtle.

It may be worthwhile to take another look through the ethnographic literature. One of my wonderful commenters has pointed me to an article by a sociologist of Zambian origin, Mwizenge S. Tembo:

It is [with] the frequent circulation of the hormones, the increased flow of blood during ovulation, and especially during pregnancy that women in Sub-Saharan Africa may acquire a characteristic mild to quite remarkable red-orangeish glow to their skin. In fact an obvious tell-tell sign of being pregnant among married women and also among young girls who may have had sex out of wed lock, even when the pregnancy is not even physically visible, is the characteristic lightening of the skin-tone whether the woman is light or very dark. Among the Tumbuka, Chewa, Nsenga, and Ngoni people of Eastern Zambia, several terms are used to describe the state of being pregnant. “Ali ndi pakati” means that “the woman is in between”. Because the majority of women in African societies prior to modern medicine had very high deaths and faced danger during the birthing process, the woman was said to be literally “between life and death” or “living with uncertainty”. “Ali ndi mimba” means “the woman has a stomach” referring to the obvious bulging stomach of a pregnant woman. The most relevant term to this discussion is “ali ndi pathupi” which means “the woman has a body” (Salaun, 1969; Price, 1970) which refers to the characteristic light skin tone or the visible obvious glow the woman assumes when she gets pregnant. 

This light reddish skin is considered desirable by African men and may serve an adaptive purpose: “Among many other possible explanations, the most compelling may be that the lighter skin, even among the darkest of indigenous Africans, may have been a normal and natural biological marker and signal that the woman was very fertile.” Tembo is a fan of evolutionary psychology and may be indirectly echoing a meme that began with me and Pierre van den Berghe. Nonetheless, there may indeed be more awareness of this menstrual change in skin color than I had thought, particularly in settings where most variation in skin color is intra-ethnic.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, this research topic may still be ‘a bridge too far.’ Admittedly, a researcher should have little trouble finding out whether the premenstrual darkening of the eye area is a sexual turnoff for men. I’m sure it is—many women certainly seem to think so. But how would one determine whether this male response is hardwired or not? By measuring it as a function of testosterone levels? Finally, would such a hardwired mental algorithm shed light on other feelings towards skin color?

It might be more interesting to investigate how men respond to the premenstrual reddening of the female torso region. Recruitment of female participants would nonetheless be much more difficult, as would be the task of getting approval from the research ethics committee. There’s also the little matter that this premenstrual ‘blushing’ is visible only in light-skinned women. Conversely, premenstrual darkening of the eye area is visible mainly in darker-skinned women. 

References

Bobst, C., and J.S. Lobmaier. (2012). Men's preference for the ovulating female is triggered by subtle face shape differences, Hormones and Behavior, 62, 413-417.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22846725

Dupuis-Roy, N., I. Fortin, D. Fiset, and F. Gosselin. (2009). Uncovering gender discrimination cues in a realistic setting, Journal of Vision, 9(2), 10, 1–8.

http://journalofvision.org/9/2/10/

Edwards, E.A. and S.Q. Duntley. (1949), Cutaneous vascular changes in women in reference to the menstrual cycle and ovariectomy, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 57, 501-509.

Frost, P. (1988). Human skin color: a possible relationship between its sexual dimorphism and its social perception, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 32, 38-58.

McGuiness, B.W. (1961). Skin pigmentation and the menstrual cycle, British Medical Journal, 2, 563.

http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC1969464?pdf=render

Porcheron, A., E. Mauger, and R. Russell (2013). Aspects of facial contrast decrease with age and are cues for age perception. PLoS ONE 8(3): e57985

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057985

Russell, R. (2010). Why cosmetics work. In Adams, R., Ambady, N., Nakayama, K., & Shimojo, S. (eds.) The Science of Social Vision. New York: Oxford.

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~rrussell/Russell_SocialVision_cosmetics_chapter.pdf

Russell, R. ( 2009). A sex difference in facial contrast and its exaggeration by cosmetics, Perception, 38, 1211-1219

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~rrussell/Russell_2009.pdf

Samson, N., B. Fink, and P. Matts. (2011). Does a woman’s skin color indicate her fertility level? Preliminary findings, Swiss Journal of Psychology/Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie/Revue Suisse de Psychologie, 70(4), 99-202.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/sjp/70/4/199/

Snell, R.S. and R. Turner. (1966). Skin pigmentation in relation to the menstrual cycle, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 47, 147-155.

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v47/n2/full/jid1966119a.html

Tegner, E. (1992). Sex differences in skin pigmentation illustrated in art, The American Journal of Dermatopathology, 14, 283-287.

http://journals.lww.com/amjdermatopathology/Abstract/1992/06000/Sex_Differences_in_Skin_Pigmentation_Illustrated.16.aspx

Tembo, M.S. (2010). The Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies. Eurocentric Destruction of Indigenous Conceptions: the Secret Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies.

http://people.bridgewater.edu/~mtembo/menu/articles/AfricanBeautyRevisedMarch162010.pdf
 

van den Berghe, P. L. and P. Frost. (1986), Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism, and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture co-evolution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9, 87-113.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1986.9993516

Vargas-Guadarrama, L. (1971). Pigmentation cutanée et cycle menstruel, Paris, Université Paris VII, Thèse de doctorat.

Trading in fair-skinned women. Did it happen elsewhere?

 

Austronesian woman (Roekiah Soeara, 1942, Indonesian actress - source). Austronesian and Papuan peoples intermixed in coastal Papua-New Guinea and on the islands to the east. This intermixture seems to have been mainly due to Austronesian women joining polygynous Papuan households. Did this happen through peaceful exchange (brides for land?) or through raiding and kidnapping? 

 

In all human populations, the sexes differ somewhat in skin color, women looking paler and men browner and ruddier. This sex difference is mirrored by a cross-cultural tendency to make lighter skin a female norm, which women often accentuate by various means (e.g., staying out of the sun, wearing sun-protective clothing, applying white facial powders or skin-bleaching preparations). Traditionally, this norm was said to be ‘white’ in Europe and East Asia, ‘golden’ in South-East Asia, and ‘red’ in sub-Saharan Africa (van den Berghe and Frost, 1986).

Why are women lighter-colored than men? Some ethologists have argued that light skin is one of several infant traits that the adult female body has adopted to calm aggressive impulses in men and induce caring behavior. This visual stimulus would thus influence male sexual response without being erogenous in and of itself. Whatever the ultimate cause, traditional social environments have tended to make women’s lighter skin a criterion of mate choice, often a leading one (Frost, 2011).

Evidently, skin color varies not only between men and women but also between different human populations. What happens when people become aware of the second kind of skin-color variation? Specifically, what happens to the feelings associated with the first kind? How are they transposed into this new social context?

One result may be a form of trade: women from lighter-skinned populations will become objects of commerce for sale to men in darker-skinned populations. This was the case between the 8th and 19th centuries, when women were exported from Europe to the Muslim world, i.e., Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia (see previous post).

Has this kind of trade developed elsewhere? To be economically viable, it should meet certain conditions:

1. The two populations differ enough in skin color to make the trade worthwhile.

2. There is enough supply, i.e., the women are obtained for trade on a large enough scale through local wars or slave raiding.

3. There is enough demand, i.e., the male clients are polygynous enough and wealthy enough.

These conditions came together with the rise of the Muslim world to geopolitical dominance in the 8th century. Elsewhere, and at other times, the conditions were less optimal. People usually had little contact with other people whose skin color substantially differed from their own. In pre-Columbian America, for instance, it’s difficult to see how such trading could have developed, given the slight differences in skin color among different Amerindian groups.

Nonetheless, there are a few intriguing examples, albeit on a small scale:

Sub-Saharan Africa

Skin color does visibly differ among the various peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, to a greater degree in fact than what many non-Africans might think. These differences seem to interact with notions of sexual beauty, as Lugira (1970) writes about pre-colonial Uganda:

The Ganda concept of skin pigmentation considers light coloured complexions to be differing shades of white.  A dark brown skin colour is said to be — eruyeru, that is, somewhat white. A really brown‑reddish‑yellow person is said to be mweru = white, which in comparison would be considered to be blonde; and this in the Ganda aesthetic language is considered as red = myufu, the most perfect skin pigmentation.

As a result, the lighter skin of some groups could become a casus belli:

[…] The Nnyambo people were the handsome looking (brown‑red) inhabitants of the south of Buganda, in the Ziba countries and Kalagwe. The Nnyambo women were one of the reasons that induced Suna II to wage war with Kiziba after which he suffered from small pox and died (Lugira, 1970)

South-East Asia

An incipient trade of this sort existed in 19th- and 20th-century Thailand, where some Chinese merchants would offer their daughters to Thai rulers in exchange for protection and influence:

'Chinese of wealth', wrote the American missionary N. A. McDonald in 1884, 'often become favorites with the rulers and receive titles of nobility, and these noblemen in return present their daughters to Their Majesties.'

[…] William Skinner noted that Chinese women were 'prized for their light skin color'. Here, skin colour was valued as a form of feminine beauty and a sign of 'Chineseness'. (Jiemin, 2003)

This kind of exchange was consistent with indigenous Thai notions of female beauty, as shown by a recent study:

Young women in all four regions of Thailand considered ‘bright face skin’ and ‘white-pink (body) skin’ as the next most important physical appearance characteristics. Women in the North region were most concerned about having bright face skin, perhaps because they already tend to have lighter body skin which is viewed as desirable. Women in South region were most concerned with body skin color, which may be because they tend to have darker skin color. (Rongmuang et al., 2011)

Papua New Guinea / Melanesia

Finally, lighter-skinned women may have been objects of exchange in coastal Papua New Guinea and on the islands to the east (New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomons, Fiji). This area was a zone of intermixture between two streams of settlement: Papuans with dark brown if not black skin and Austronesians with light brown skin. Interestingly, this intermixture mainly took the form of Papuan men pairing with Austronesian women, as shown by comparison of paternally-transmitted Y chromosomes and maternally-transmitted mtDNA:

[…] This genetic admixture was most likely male biased involving mostly Austronesian women and, over time, mostly New Guinean men, resulting in a higher proportion of Melanesian than Asian Y-chromosome together with a higher proportion of Asian than Melanesian mtDNAs as observed in contemporary Polynesians (Mona et al. 2007; see also Kayser et al. 2006)

[…] mtDNA and NRY analyses indicate that this admixture was sex biased (Melton et al. 1995; Kayser et al. 2000; Su et al. 2000; Hurles et al. 2002): about 94% of Polynesian mtDNAs are of Asian ancestry, whereas about 66% of Polynesian Y chromosomes are of Near Oceania ancestry (Kayser et al. 2006). Although the mtDNA support for this sex-biased admixture hypothesis has recently been questioned (Soares et al. 2011), genome-wide SNP data do indicate significantly more Asian versus New Guinea ancestry for the X chromosome of Polynesians than for the autosomes (Wollstein et al. 2010), in agreement with the sex-biased admixture scenario. In addition, Papuan-speaking groups in New Guinea show higher frequencies of Asian mtDNA haplogroups than of Asian NRY haplogroups (Kayser, Choi, et al. 2008).

[…] Overall, the mtDNA haplogroups in the Solomons are predominantly of Asian [i.e., Austronesian] origin, whereas the NRY haplogroups are predominantly of NO [Near Oceania, i.e., Papuan] origin. (Delfin et al, 2012)

Since Papuans are much more polygynous than Austronesians, and in the past more patrilocal, this intermixture was probably due to Austronesian women traveling over some distance and joining polygynous Papuan households.¹ How and why is anyone’s guess. Peaceful exchange? “Give us some of your land and we’ll give you some of our women?” Or was it raiding and kidnapping?

In either case, the two groups were probably keenly aware that one of them was lighter-skinned and the other darker-skinned. Even today, after millennia of intermixture, color consciousness remains strong in this contact zone, as noted by a study of the Eastern Solomons:

The Lau were conscious of skin color; some parents, particularly mothers, tried to dissuade their sons from marrying much better-educated girls from the Western Solomons because of their dark skins. Although color consciousness is decreasing, until quite recently clans and persons of higher status have been generally lighter, and marriages have been preferentially within clan or class status levels. (Baldwin and Damon, 1973)

According to an origin myth from New Britain, these differences in skin color arose through the marriage choices of two brothers:

To-Kabinana said to To-Karvuvu, “Do you get two light-coloured coco-nuts. One of them you must hide, then bring the other to me.” To-Karvuvu, however, did not obey, but got one light and one dark nut, and having hidden the latter, he brought the light-coloured one to his brother, who tied it to the stern of his canoe, and seating himself in the bow, paddled out to sea. He paid no attention to the noise that the nut made as it struck against the sides of his canoe nor did he look around. Soon the coco-nut turned into a handsome woman, who sat on the stern of the canoe and steered, while To-Kabinana paddled. When he came back to land, his brother was enamoured of the woman and wished to take her as his wife, but To-Kabinana refused his request and said that they would now make another woman. Accordingly, To-Karvuvu brought the other coco-nut, but when his brother saw that it was dark-coloured, he upbraided To-Karvuvu and said: “You are indeed a stupid fellow. You have brought misery upon our mortal race.  From now on, we shall be divided into two classes, into you and us.” Then they tied the coco-nut to the stern of the canoe, and paddling away as before, the nut turned into a black-skinned woman; but when they had returned to shore, To-Kabinana said: “Alas, you have only ruined our mortal race.  If all of us were only light of skin, we should not die.  Now, however, this dark-skinned woman will produce one group, and the light-skinned woman another, and the light-skinned men shall marry the dark-skinned women, and the dark-skinned men shall marry the light-skinned women.” And so, To-Kabinana divided mankind into two classes. (Gray, 1916, p. 108)

Conclusion

Light-skinned European women became objects of commerce because of an unusual set of circumstances, essentially the relative dominance of the Muslim world and, correspondingly, the relative weakness of the European world.

Circumstances may come and go, but basic notions of human beauty change less quickly. In the near future, a similar situation may develop in response to the impoverishment of common people in Europe and North America and the growing affluence of elites in the Third World, particularly in resource-rich countries.

Note

1. The literature also puts forward the reverse scenario as a possible explanation, i.e., Papuan men marrying into Austronesian communities. In this second scenario, Papuan men would have had to renounce not only patrilocality but also polygyny and low paternal investment. This is a more radical behavioral change than the one associated with Austronesian women marrying into Papuan communities. Elsewhere in the world, we have two other examples of a high-polygyny population coming into contact with a low-polygyny one: Bantu and Khoisans in southern Africa and Bantu and Pygmies in central Africa. In both cases, intermixture has almost wholly involved women moving from the low-polygyny population to the high-polygyny one. There has been little if any movement of men in the other direction.

*****************************************************

The Spanish online journal La Tercera Cultura has recently translated and published one of my posts: “Cómo se llegó a pacificar Europa.”

 

References

Baldwin, J.C. and A. Damon. (1973). Some genetic traits in Solomon Island populations, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 39, 195-201.

Delfin, D., S. Myles, Y. Choi, D. Hughes, R. Illek, M. van Oven, B. Pakendorf, M. Kayser, and M. Stoneking. (2012). Bridging Near and Remote Oceania: mtDNA and NRY Variation in the Solomon Islands, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29(2), 545–564.

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/2/545.short

Frost, P. (2011). Hue and luminosity of human skin: a visual cue for gender recognition and other mental tasks, Human Ethology Bulletin, 26(2), 25-34. http://media.anthro.univie.ac.at/ISHE/index.php/bulletin/bulletin-contents

Frost, P. (2010). Femmes claires, hommes foncés. Les racines oubliées du colorisme, Quebec City : Presses Universitaires de Laval.

Gray, L.H. (1916). The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 9 Oceanic, Boston: Marshall Jones.

Jiemin, B. (2003). The Gendered Biopolitics of Marriage and Immigration: A Study of Pre-1949 Chinese Immigrants in Thailand, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34(1), 127-151.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20072478?uid=3737720&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102467085371

Kayser M, S. Brauer, R. Cordaux R, et al. (2006). Melanesian and Asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 23, 2234-2244.

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/11/2234.abstract

Lugira, A.M. (1970). Ganda Art, Kampala: Osasa pub.

Mona, S., M. Tommaseo-Ponzetta, S. Brauer, H. Sudoyo, S. Marzuki, and M. Kayser. (2007). Patterns of Y-Chromosome Diversity Intersect with the Trans-New Guinea Hypothesis, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 24 (11), 2546-2555.

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/11/2546.short

Rongmuang, D., B.J. McElmurry, L.L. McCreary, C.G. Park, A. Miller, and C. Corte. (2011). Regional Differences in Physical Appearance Identity among Young Adult Women in Thailand, Western Journal of Nursing Research, 33(1), 106-120.

http://dspace.lib.uic.edu/handle/10027/8345

Van den Berghe, P. L. and P. Frost. (1986). Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism, and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture co-evolution?  Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9, 87-113.

The other slave trade

 

Although the slave raiders usually left infants behind, older girls and boys could be taken, if suitable for immediate sale (Selling a child-slave, painting by Vasily Vereshchagin – source).

Europe used to export slaves to the non-European world. Such a statement would astonish most people today, even among the university-educated. Surely, those slaves were few in number, certainly fewer than the African slaves taken across the Atlantic.  And surely all of that happened long before the Atlantic slave trade. 

Well, no and no. The numbers were huge. At the height of that trade, over 10,000 Eastern Europeans were enslaved each year between 1500 and 1650 for export to North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia … a total of 1.5 million. By comparison, the Americas received fewer than 300,000 African slaves before 1600 and another 1.5 million between 1600 and 1700 (Fisher, 1972; Kolodziejczyk, 2006). Western Europeans were likewise enslaved and taken abroad, mainly to North Africa. How many? More than 1 million between 1530 and 1780 (Davis, 2004).

And, yes, those European slaves were going across the Mediterranean while African slaves were going across the Atlantic. Officially, the “harvest” ended with the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), which called on the Ottoman Empire to stop all slave raiding (Abou-el-Haj, 1969). Unofficially, it did not end on a large scale until Russia annexed the Khanate of the Crimea in 1783—a quarter-century before the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Fair-skinned women were thereafter exported on a smaller scale until the late 19th century, mainly from the Caucasus.  

Differences from the African Slave Trade

The white slave trade differed from its black counterpart in a few key ways. In Africa, a slave-trader typically purchased prisoners of war who had already lost their freedom through local conflicts. In Europe, he played a more active role.  

This was the case with the Crimean Tatars who lived under Ottoman protection in the Black Sea region. Beginning in the mid-15th century, they would fan out each year on raids into what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. These raids served no military purpose, being driven by the profits to be made in the slave trade:

[…] most of these raids do not appear to have had any military purpose and, moreover, had little or no relationship to Ottoman policy. They were an integral part of the Crimean economy, a "harvesting of the steppe" as the Tatars explained it. (Fisher, 1973)

In a royal [Polish] document dated 1555 we read: “There are many Turks who send Tatars supplied with their horses and armour into our domains, and later share the profits in the fields”, this last expression referring to the fact that the division took place far from the eyes of the Ottoman police and customs officers who might have viewed negatively the breaking of the peace treaty or the failure to pay taxes due by those involved in the slave trade.  

Notwithstanding such efforts to escape the tax duties, the Ottoman state was among the principal share holders in the Black Sea slave trade. According to Pretwicz, the sultan's income from the slave trade in Akkerman and Ocakiv (Turkish Özü ) amounted to a few 100,000 akçe a year. Strikingly similar are the numbers for Caffa established by Inalcik on the basis of Ottoman tax registers. The slave tax collected in Caffa amounted to 620,000 akçe in 1520 and 650,000 akçe in 1529.26 The same author estimates the total state revenue from the slave trade as approaching 100,000 gold florins (i.e. circa 6,000,000 akçe) in the mid 16th century. (Kolodziejczyk, 2006)

The white slave trade was different in a second way. Most black slaves were destined for physical labor on plantations. There was thus a stronger preference for men over women. In contrast, white slaves were used more for domestic service, particularly concubinage and marriage. There was thus a stronger preference for women, as reflected in the sex ratio of the slave population: black slaves were predominantly male, and white slaves predominantly female. Furthermore, while blacks of both sexes sold for the same price, Russian and Circassian women fetched 50% more than men of the same nationality. (Verlinden, 1977, pp. 211, 224, 306, 315, 330-331, 460, 517; see also Frost, 1990). This price differential continued until the end of white slavery. A mid-19th century report from Turkey states that a “trained, strong, black slave” would cost 4,000 to 5,000 piasters, whereas “white slave girls of special beauty” were worth 50,000 piasters or more (Lewis, 1990, p. 13).  

Conclusion

Slave trading existed in many parts of the world and during many historical periods. Trading in fair-skinned women, however, was much more limited in space and time. There is no evidence of it during Roman times, at least not on a large scale. If a Roman notable wanted a bride with milk-white skin, he would look among the families in his entourage and not among the slaves at the local market. After all, a native-born woman of good family would bring a dowry and valuable family connections.

All of this changed in the 7th century with the dramatic expansion of the Arab world into the Middle East and thence into North Africa and Spain. The new elites were darker in skin tone and, also, more polygynous. It was these two factors that would fuel demand for fair-skinned brides and concubines. 

A third factor was of course the relative weakness of European societies, particularly during the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. With the gradual strengthening of European states, this trade increasingly took the form of hit-and-run raids that focused on poorly defended areas, such as the plains north of the Black Sea. This raiding would finally end only with European annexation of those “states” that earned most of their income from the slave trade, such as the Khanate of the Crimea and the Beyliks of North Africa.

Would this trade have continued if Europe had remained weak? Probably. Would it have eventually become more humane and sustainable? Doubtful. Though often described as “harvesting,” there never was any effort to make it sustainable. A Tatar raid typically left behind the old and the very young, as a Polish report noted: “In the fields and forests they [i.e. the Tatars] left behind over 200 poor children whom they could not take along since everyone preferred to take horses and oxen rather than children” (Kolodziejczyk, 2006).

The result was widespread depopulation of much of Ukraine and southern Russia, which in turn forced the Tatars to raid farther and farther afield, even as far as present-day Poland. Demographic wastage was considerable: 

The Crimean Tatar society was based on raiding the neighbouring Slavic and Caucasian sedentary societies and selling the captives into the slave markets of Eurasia. Approximately 75 percent of the Crimean population consisted of slaves or freedmen, and much of the free population was highly predatory, engaged either in the gathering of slaves or in the selling of them. It is known that for every slave the Crimeans sold in the market, they killed outright several other people during their raids, and a couple more died on the way to the slave market. (Britannica, 2013)

There was no resource management, only resource depletion (Wikipedia, 2013). As Kolodziejczyk (2006) notes:

We should not close our eyes to the consequences of depopulation, affecting large Slavic territories in Eastern Europe. If an "alternative" history of Ukraine were imaginable, perhaps the country's historical development would have looked different had it not been for the slave trade.

Ukraine is considered to be part of ‘Old Europe’ yet the plains north of the Black Sea were finally opened for settlement at about the same time as the plains of the United States and Canada. 

References

Abou-el-Haj, R.A. (1969). The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699-1703, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89(3), 467-475. 

Britannica. (2012). “Slavery” in Encyclopedia Britannica’s Guide to Black History.

http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24157 

Davis, R. (2004). Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800, Palgrave-Macmillan.

Fisher, A.W. (1973). Azov in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, 21(2), 161-174. 

Fisher, A. (1972). Muscovy and the Black Sea slave trade, Canadian American Slavic Studies, 6, 575-594.

Frost, P. (1990). Fair women, dark men: the forgotten roots of colour prejudice, History of European Ideas, 12, 669-679.

Kolodziejczyk, D. (2006). Slave hunting and slave redemption as a business enterprise: The northern Black Sea region in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, Oriente Moderno, 86, 1, The Ottomans and Trade, pp. 149-159.

Lewis, B. (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East, New York: Oxford University Press. 

Verlinden, C. (1977). L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. II, Ghent.

Wikipedia (2013). Crimean-Nogai Raids,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean-Nogai_Raids

White skin privilege

A new arrival (painting by Giuilo Rosati - source). The privilege of white skin …

Earlier this year, fashion model Cameron Russell condemned the unbearable whiteness of her industry:

[…] I won a genetic lottery, and I am a recipient of a legacy. For the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures with femininity and white skin. This is a legacy that was built for me, and that I’ve been cashing in on. (Russell, 2013)

Yes, Ms. Russell did win a genetic lottery, being certainly more attractive than average. But she also mentioned a second unearned windfall: a beauty privilege due to the “legacy” of the past few centuries, when Europeans lorded over the world. Without that legacy, she would presumably be a very ordinary woman, perhaps even ugly.

This presumption can be tested. There was a time, not so long ago, when Europeans were weaklings on the world scene, when large parts of their continent were ruled by other peoples, and when the center of geopolitical power lay in the Middle East. In such a context, women like Cameron Russell would have had much less beauty privilege to cash in on.

In reality, they had plenty, and not just in Europe. ‘White slavery’ today means the international trafficking of women for prostitution. Back then, it meant the provisioning of the Muslim world with European concubines, who were valued for their white skin (Lewis, 1990, pp. 11-13, 56, 72). This trade was considerable in Muslim Spain:

The same convoys of booty also included women, these Frankish women who were all the more sought after in Cordova because they were blond and fair-skinned. It was among them, as among the captive women from Gascony, that the Umayyad princes chose their most pampered concubines and who, once they became mothers, were themselves raised to the rank of veritable princesses, of proven sultanesses (umm walad) who were influential and quick to enter, with the assistance of Slav eunuchs, into secret and complicated palace intrigues. But the Frankish women did not populate only the caliph's harems; the dignitaries of the khassa and the rich burghers of the cities also procured them at lavish prices, like, in the modern period, the Circassian women who have so curiously tinted the upper classes of oriental Muslim society. (Lévi-Provençal, 1953, p. 179)

Such women came from places that were poorer and less advanced than the Muslim world. Neither they nor their future masters knew what white skin would signify over a half-millennium later. Indeed, no one foresaw the rise of Europe to geopolitical preeminence, certainly not this 11th-century Muslim author:

For those who live furthest to the north between the last of the seven climates and the limits of the inhabited world, the excessive distance of the sun in relation to the zenith line makes the air cold and the atmosphere thick. Their temperaments are therefore frigid, their humors raw, their bellies gross, their color pale, their hair long and lank. Thus they lack keenness of understanding and clarity of intelligence, and are overcome by ignorance and dullness, lack of discernment, and stupidity. Such are the Slavs, the Bulgars, and their neighbors. (Lewis, 1990, p. 47)

Nonetheless, their women were considered strikingly attractive, even to the point of being simply called ‘beautiful girls.’ An 8th-century Arab musician wrote: “They used not to train beautiful slave girls to sing, but they used only to train yellow and black girls. The first to teach valuable girls to sing was my father” (Lewis, 1990, p. 56).

What gave rise to this desire for light-skinned foreign women? It seems that fair skin has long been key to Arab notions of female beauty:

Praise of a girl's looks is traditionally couched in such terms as: Her face is like the full moon, her mouth is an almond, her nose a cardamon, she is plump, and dimpled etc. [...] The highest praise is perhaps that she is as white as snow — strange praise indeed to come from a people very few of whom had ever seen snow. (Haim 1978, p. 88)

[The moon] is the most common image used to represent female beauty. When attempting to draw the attention of a beautiful girl on the street, a young man may call out, “’Es ya qamar?” (roughly, “What’s happening, O moon?”). Two important components of the image, brightness (fairness of skin) and roundness (of face), convey the popular conception of beauty in Palestinian and Arab culture. (Muhawi and Kanaana 1989, p. 60, cf. also 122, 181)

Not just in Arab societies …

In general, traditional human societies share a belief that women should be fairer-skinned than men (van den Berghe and Frost, 1986). This cultural norm runs parallel to a physical norm, i.e., in all human populations, women are less pigmented than men from puberty onward. Both melanin and cutaneous blood are involved, with the result that women look paler and men browner and ruddier. Women also display a sharper contrast between facial skin color and eye/lip color. These visual cues are subconsciously used by the human mind to determine whether an individual is a man or a women (Dupuis-Roy et al., 2009; Frost, 2011; Russell, 2010; Russell, 2003; Russell and Sinha, 2007; Tarr et al., 2001).

In addition to aiding sex recognition, these visual cues may also trigger feelings that in one way or another depend on the sex of the person being observed. Since lighter skin is specific not only to women but also to infants, some authors view it as one of several features (smooth, pliable skin, high-pitched voice, small nose and chin, etc.) that the adult female body has borrowed for the purpose of calming aggressive impulses in the adult male and inducing feelings of care (Frost, 2010, pp. 134-135). Such feelings may feed into male eroticism but are not erotic per se. Desire for darker female skin is attested as an alternate, though secondary mode of sexual arousal, even in contexts where exotic otherness seems to play no role, such as premodern European peasant societies, specifically within a context of passionate but short-lived relationships (Frost, 2010, pp. 90-91). This alternate eroticism, previously repressed, has become popular in the Western world since the 1920s with the growing acceptance of tanned skin as a female fashion accessory (Frost, 2010, pp. 91-103).

Men thus seem to be innately oriented toward paler female skin, if only as part of a mechanism for sex recognition. This orientation can, but does not always, translate into erotic attraction and mate choice. One notable exception is the modern Western world, where tanned female skin has become increasingly popular. Another seems to be the high-polygyny region of sub-Saharan Africa and Papua-New Guinea, where attitudes toward female skin color tend to be ambivalent (Frost, 2010, pp. 83-97). First, the relative scarcity of female mates ensures that all available women have takers. Second, due to the higher polygyny rate, fathers invest less in their offspring and mothers invest more. Darker women may thus benefit from a perception that they are better at hoe farming and providing for their children. Ardener (1954) makes this point with regard to the Ibo of Nigeria:

In the choice of a wife, yellow-skinned girls are regarded as beauties, and, other things being equal, they command higher bride prices.  On the other hand it is generally held, especially by dark-complexioned persons, that yellow-skinned people are not as strong as the dark and do not live as long.  A 'black' girl is said to be a harder worker. […] A Mission headmaster was of the opinion that the preference for yellow girls was greater nowadays than in his youth.  He thought that the reason for this was that people formerly looked for strength rather than beauty and tended to marry black girls.

Conclusion

There is a widespread belief, particularly among proponents of whiteness studies, that notions of beauty are determined by power relationships. The strong and mighty are inevitably ‘beautiful.’ This belief is so entrenched that little concern is shown for counterfactual evidence, such as the medieval trade in fair-skinned women for clients in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

This trade existed for two reasons. On the one hand, European states were too weak to stop it. On the other, European women were considered beautiful by people in geopolitically stronger states to the south and east.  Again, this pattern is inconsistent with the belief that power relationships determine notions of beauty.

 

References

Ardener, E.W. (1954). Some Ibo attitudes to skin pigmentation, Man, 54, 71-73.

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