My observations between Pathan/Pashtun women in Pakistan compared to "White" Women in terms of perceived femininity and beauty
Submitted May 16, 2020, 8:20 a.m. by LoudAdeptness_2This war partially inspired yesterday about women's bodyhair on r/gc_woc
I wanna start off by saying that Pakistan is a very very diverse country in terms of appearance, culture, history and linguistics and the people"s" here are divided between ethnic groups, religious sects and clan groups
now one of the most noticeable ethnic groups in Pakistan are the Pashtuns or Pathans, a Iranic ethnic group split between Pakistan and Afghanistan, appearances of Pashtun can vary slightly but they but from what I have seen(from the case of my Husband and his family) most can pass for southern Europeans if they are steeled in Punjab or Sindh or eastern European if they are from the northern areas
now I wanna discuss Pashtun women, Pashtun women are rarely discussed in Pakistani society, they are negated to stay in the house and pop out a dozen or so kids, that's the way majority of them are forced to live, now whats interesting is how femininity and the standards of beauty are applied to them
now Pakistan is sadly a colorist country, naturally darker skinned groups are looked down upon, it is not institutional but its conscious in most of Pakistani society
now reading this you'd think that Pathan women would be the most sought after group of women in Pakistan, but that is far from the case
Pathan women are stereotyped as masculine, unfeminine, extremely backwards, violent and having a haggard appearance
and while these are ugly stereotypes their is some truth to the latter, due to cultural reasons many Pathan women are forbidden to wear make up, shave body hair or even use basic skin conditioner, something most women in Pakistan, Europe and America already have the freedom to do(or in some cases is culturally forced on us but that's not the discussion here)
now the same men in Pakistan who mock ugly, masculine Pathan women will likely lust after "white" European women, women without without make up, and if in a Pathan style dress are almost physically identical to a Pathan woman
Where does this colorism come from? I've heard it from Far East Asia, India, Italy... There seems to be nothing in common with these places. Why does everybody consider "light" better than "dark" in women?
I mean its simple really, In the Far East and Italy were they were humongous populations, color was a identification of class and social status, If you were a rich nobleman you were likely less tanned then the slaves, peasants and serfs who worked the fields all day, even if they were genetically the same racial groups as the nobles they would have more of a tan
this mentally existed for a long time, up until the 17th century the French and English nobles would famously powder themselves to appear more paler, as a tanned skin was associated with peasants
now with Pakistan its far more complicated, cause of the many many ethnic groups we have, I'll get into that if you want me to
The class distinction makes some sort of sense and it's easy to see the "logic" behind it. But I know in Middle East (and perhaps in Italy too) there were different "uses" for "different colour" imported slaves/spoils of war in the past. Especially female. Recently ISIS was selling Yazidi slaves for different price depending on the colour of her eyes. Discussion about ancient Mediterranean slavery often revolves around male slaves. I wonder if the colour of men was as important as it was for the women.
I live in what they call "mono culture". It would be interesting to know how different ethnic groups talk about women who actually live side by side. Unlike in here where we used to see different looking women mostly on tv and movies.
well In Islamic Sultanates and Emirates, Slave Soldiers(Mamluks) were primarily Slavic and Turkic descent, as they were believed to have a better nature for violence and fighting, while Sub-Saharan African male slaves were regulated to menial position of labor and housework as they were believed to have a more submissive nature and viewed as being easily conquerable
Pakistan has many racial groups and tribes but you organize Pakistan into 6 main racial groups,Punjabis about 45%
Pathan/Pashtun at 18%
Sindhi at 14%
Saraiki at 9%
Muhajir at 7%
Balochi at 3%
and the rest are extremely a diverse minority groups(Including my mother and grandparents who belong to a Tibetic ethnic group in Pakistan)
Its fair to say that we all don't get along here, In Pakistan marriages are rarely interracial and people marry into the same clan or ethnic group, women and men as well usually stick to their own group of people, its how it is
As for TV and representation in media well that's another story, Punjabi's are the majority in Pakistan and you'd think we;d be using Punjabi as the Linua Franca of Pakistan, but we don't, we use Urdu
Urdu is a language foreign to the land and people of Pakistan, it was selected for the sake of inclusivity, so all media, radio and newspaper are in Urdu, a language that less then 8% of the country speaks as their mother tongue
That seems very complex. Are you free-willingly in this massive cross-ethnic union? Pakistani are 2/3 the population of America but only in 1/10 of space. I know many people are pro-globalist, pro-multiculturalism but the more I learn about the multicultural countries the more it seems people still stick with their own ethnic group. Is there any talk of separatism?
I'm reading the Wikipedia page. Oh, I remember reading about East India Company in school. They conveniently brushed off the colonialist part.
Mamluks sounds like the earliest form of structural racism. Wonder who drew the shortest straw in that classification...
Its more that were forced to get along together, and everyone thinks that their group is the best and that one particular group is the reason for all the problems in Pakistan
well we've had one very bloody war of separatism which resulted in state sponsored ethnic genocide and mass rape[various periods of separatist insurgency in Baluchistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_Balochistan
)
a very strong autonomy movement in Sindh
they brush our history as well in our schools, no basis of Pakistan ever existed, the region that is now Pakistan before the British was split between 4 radically different kingdoms , The Punjabi Sikh Empire, The Pathan Durrani Empire, The Baloch Khanate of Kilat and the Talpur kingdom of Sindh, all of whom constantly fought each otherso they literally don't even mention these kingdoms in our history books, cause our nation was founded on Islam, so we learn about Arabs and how great they were rather then our own history, this causes resentment by some people who in turn don't send their kids to school
Yes Biblical and Quranic ethnography are very similar, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Italians, Iberians (basically all white and brownish peoples) are the children of Shem( the base model of humanity /s)
Turks,Slavs,Huns,Gog and Magog are the children of Japheth(who in that time were believed to have a naturally savage barbarian nature by Muslim Arabs)
and Sudanese, Nigerians and other Sub Saharan African people were the children of Ham (what were believed by Arabs to have a naturally submissive and slave like nature)
You seem to know this already based on your other posts, but having light pigmentation does not automatically mean someone looks like they are of European descent, and in my experience, most Central, South, and Southwest Asians labeled white passing aren't actually white passing, they just have light features. You made a post claiming that white women tend to have square jaws, but completely failed to mention how Pashtun women, ESPECIALLY the ones living in Pakistan rather then Afghanistan, tend to have very large hooked noses and prominent chins which are considered masculine despite men and women having that same feature (it's more of an ethnicity thing in my opinion) and rarely having light features. Racist non-Pashtun Pakistani men aren't going to keep in mind the minority of light featured Pashtun Pakistani women and even smaller minority of actually white passing Pashtun women when lusting after actual white women. Pashtun Pakistani women being light featured is much more common then for example Punjabi and Sindhi Pakistani women having light features, but it's still enough of a minority thing for it to make sense that Pashtun women wouldn't be seen that way, especially when a lot of Pashtun women are considered "masculine" and such due to the stereotypes about Pashtun people in general being violent.
while on average Pashtun women do have more lighter features, these features can very depending on which clan
for e.g Afridi Pashtun are famous for having blonde and brown haired and light eyes in Pakistan, Niazi Pashtuns are about as dark as Pashtuns can get, with tanned light brown skin and dark hair
as I stated in Pakistan, most people marry into the same clan and so certain features tend to remain the same in certain clans