Do you think the media you consumed growing up affected your preferences?

Question we've touched on in various ways across different threads but wanted to outright ask if you think the media you consumed growing up affected your preferences. I think to a certain degree it did, Disney princesses (though actually my biggest cartoon crushes as a kid were Jasmine and Pocahontas which didn't become my preference later in life.) Wrestling like seeing women like Torrie Wilson definitely affected me as well as watching shows like VIP, the Andy Sidaris films and the sort all sort of contributed to my ideal woman I'm sure. Not to mention with my library card I often rented old movies from the 40s, 50s and 60s and was introduced to women like Grace Kelly, Jayne Mansfield, Rhonda Fleming, Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak, among others.

I definitely think it permeated into my preferences and what I found to be the ideal beauty, but curious as to others experience if they were exposed to things like that and if it affected them throughout in their opinion. Or was it a bit more organic due to environment or a few interactions early on in life. Up until I hit puberty I had crushes on many black women and non-white women and that slowly eroded overtime as I got older and older and started to prefer Eurocentric features, to be totally honest.

 

For me, not exactly. Like yourself, I also had crushed on many famous Black women as teenager that are still beautiful to me now and I've always though that physical beauty transended race. With that being said, the older I get the more my preference seem to be for WW, for a number reasons that I'll explain on another day.

 

Not sure if it was really an influence, maybe more of an affirmation of what I was naturally attracted to. Looking back, like you, was a big WWE guy and I remember the divas I found most attractive were WW. Same for other shows/cartoons I watched at the time.

 

Some of my first major WW crushes growing up were Chloe form Smallville, Pamela Anderson and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jenna Von Oy the PAWG from the The Parkers just to name a few. This was before I even got deep into BM/WW IR porn, which is whole discussion within itself.

 

Yeah for me it always felt like a confirmation for who I always was, especially once I reached my teenage years, like I tried to FORCE myself to be attracted to black women en masse, and it just never felt right, I always found myself floating towards white women. Took a long time to not feel like a race traitor but I also really loved seeing the beautiful white women of media and the arts. To me it always felt like a gorgeous aesthetic.

 

I think it has always been difficult to figure out how much of desire is free will and how much is shaped by larger societal forces. I think it will require more psychoanalysis than I am personally capable of performing, lol. It is beyond doubt that constant bombardment of imagery plays some sort of role, but I am unwilling to say that my desires are totally directed by external forces. So much of my desire and tastes is driven by things other than pure aesthetics that I don't feel as dictated to in that sense. Nevertheless, I am sure that the sensual/sexual tastes are perhaps more externally controlled, as they are so much more visual than things like who I get along with most easily, etc.

 

In my case, I can definitively say that my attraction towards BM happened 100% naturally and organically and it wasn't affected by media or the surrounding environment.
I got married early in life to my (white) college sweetheart and wasn't really in the dating pool at the time. Never really even thought about it, interracial dating just wasn't on my radar and I just never paid attention to other men or dating trends. I was married for over 20 years and I re-entered the dating pool in my mid 40s, once again not really giving it much thought, I was just open minded to meeting men of any race or even age group (as long as the age gap wouldn't be ridiculous). So I ended up on a dating app and started getting messages from men of different races and ethnicities, including black men... then my eyes actually opened towards it, started noticing attractive black men more, started noticing all the interracial couples IRL and on TV, started considering the possibility that I actually could end up in an interracial relationship... then naturally, some of those messages from black men turned into conversations, some of those conversations turned into dates and now here I am

 

Not from media but from my early years in school. I wasn't in an all black school, it was all white with few black people. That continued until middle school when I went to an all black school. But yeah media didn't influence me.

 

growing up i had a lot of white girls in my classes and they were my first crushes so it feels very natural to me. and i had some white women as teachers who very much doted on me and praised me so i've always had a great disposition towards them. media definitely played it's role too because i remember being fascinated with Kim Basinger in Batman and then Michelle Pfeiffer in the sequel. these were the kind of movies that were fave and there weren't any black women much less pretty black women in them. i also watched wrestling and loved Sable and Stacy Keibler. i just didn't watch a lot of media with black women in it but even irl i wasn't very interested in them. i became more conscious of how this was somewhat "problematic" as a black male as i got older and i did grow to see some black women as attractive but nothing even close to the intensity and affinity i have with white women

 

I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, went to an all black preschool and church, and really didn't see or interact much with white peers until hospital/dentist visits or grocery store trips and then grade school. Outside of cartoons, about 90 percent of what was on my tv was black entertainment. I always found attractive women attractive of any color but I'd say positive interactions personally are what ultimately made me consider dating WW. Media probably just helped me be at peace with my attractions. I don't have a color preference but I do most definitely have a personality preference. My first white friend's mother that was a spitting image of '90s Kim Cattrall but with golden blonde hair and deep brown eyes treated me like her black son through elementary school. If I stayed in black private schools and then attended an HBCU, I don't think media would've been able to give me enough influence to make the decision to date WW like integrated experiences have.

 

Definitely. I lived in the country for the majority of my life. My white preference emerged during elementary school and continued ever since (*the harsh bullying I got from black girls further fueled it). Also, I was a different type of black guy throughout my school years (even when I tried to fit in), so the hood stereotype didn’t fit me. Part of that reason is because of my autism.

For TV shows, I mainly watched animated shows (Cartoons and Anime), but I haven’t focused on many black centered shows growing up. If a show wasn’t interesting to me, I didn’t feel like seeing it.

* Don’t worry, I got over that trauma.

 

Good for you because too many people are running around letting whatever trauma they have been through in life be the driving force for how they live life. And not one of them ever achieve the happiness or success in life they claim they want to have.

 

I was an honor roll student and found myself to not fit in with my hood fully and be the only black kid around certain privileged spaces at school. I too went through the bullying and hazing from black girls but I still had positive experiences with some enough so that I didn't get turned off completely by them. The white girls seemed to appreciate my intelligence more and my physical appearance was more desirable to them. Fast forward to nowadays, I still am like a hood intellect that relates to the BM experience yet I can hold my own in the business world too amongst many white counterparts.

In hindsight, some old folks would say that when a girl likes you, she calls you ugly or tries to pick on you. Such was most of those experiences with the black girls that I had negative interactions with. As we grew up together through school and through life, so many that I knew stayed the exact way they were into adulthood. Some even forgot that it was the same me that I've always been just with a grownup boss-up plus a nice appeal and the charisma to match my confidence. A bit of trauma bond might linger and keeps me aware that some BM might have had it worse than me when it comes to relating to BW.

With the white girls, they gave positive communication towards me, for the most part. Quite a few were generous many times towards me and I probably and most definitely missed so so many pick ups from them. It's very rare to have negative experiences with WW that are my peers but I had a few problems with older ones as teachers in grade school or randomly out in public in a business setting. I really only see negative ones through entertainment. The lack of negative interactions experienced with WW and the environmentally supported more negative interactions experienced with BW could definitely influence perception.

The proximity I think is the stronger force than the imagery, though not necessarily by far in all cases, which could make for a predisposition of no fault to the BM. I don't appreciate those who judge BM as wrong for having honest preferences that are as much of a part of them as the person they know and hopefully love themselves to be. I don't think BM get enough consideration nor credit that an organic and natural romantic preference for WW doesn't mean malicious intent towards BW. I wish every BM a toxic-free and trauma-bondless healthy relationship, even if your compatibility ain't comfortable for some solely based on contrasting skin tones.

 

I knew for a fact that those black girl bullies weren’t picking on me because they liked me. I was unattractive to them (which was partly my own fault), so many of them made some sort of joke that they tell me that some other girl likes me. I easily saw past those moments and hated it. Wish I called it out though.

I never once got treatment like that from white girls in school and had a better experience with them by comparison.

 

They made their decisions and drew their lines back then. I didn't raise a finger towards those that bullied me but my way with words to roast them had the class laughing at them so bad that I was made out to be the bad guy even when they started with me. I felt bad a bit when different classes, other grades and even the teachers repeated my jokes and laughed at my bullies as they were trying to discipline and punish me. All of my closest BM friends and myself were the ones that didn't fit in and we've been best bros since the mid '90s. The ones that bullied me and my friends all peaked in middle/early high school. They have problems galore now and one even tried to approach me to date them as if I wouldn't remember what they'd done for those years. I've grown to not hold grudges and wrong those that have wronged me but I do hold them accountable to their choices and actions made concerning me (burnt bridges).

None of the white girls ever told me to my face that I'm ugly and it's actually them first that would compliment me and tell me I'm attractive or how handsome I am.