White American men seem to go for certain kinds of black women and not for others. The same is true for black men and white women, but that is another post.

I have not done any grand survey nor am I setting forth any iron rules – I know all white men are not alike. These are just some notes and observations of what I have noticed in New York.

If any black women or white men want to add their own general observations that would be great. If I have it all wrong, please tell me. I have some examples at the end. You can weigh in on them.

If you ask white men to name a beautiful black woman, most will name someone who is light-skinned, like Beyonce or Halle Berry. So you would think that among black women they would mainly go after light-skinned women. But the strange thing is they do not.

And yet they do prize whiteness in women, even in black women, but the whiteness they want is not as simple as skin colour. It is more in the general shape of her body – thin, maybe with large breasts, but not too big of a bottom. The features of her face can be black, but not too black. Hair, surprisingly, does not seem to matter that much. So it is not uncommon to see a white man with a dark-skinned black woman with natural hair.

Both black men and white men in America are affected by white ideas of female beauty, but they apply them to black women differently:

Black men apply it to skin colour (light) and hair (long and straight), but not so much to the shape of the body (still thick, though that seems to be changing).

White men are almost the opposite of that: they do not care so much about skin colour or hair – those who do apparently stick to white women – but they do care about the shape of the body and the features of the face.

Some examples:

Many white men would date these women: Iman, Jourdan Dunn, Gabrielle Union, Sanaa Lathan, Garcelle Beauvais, Lela Rochon, YaYa Da Costa, Angela Bassett, Kerry Washington, Aisha Tyler, any young black woman in an ad, in Playboy, any black weather girl or supermodel.

Most of these women have what I call a cutsie-pie face, like Gabrielle and Garcelle.

Way fewer white men would date these: Phylicia Rashad, Toccara Jones, Bria Myles, Estelle, Brandy Norwood, Adriana Bombom, Elise Neal, Latavia Roberson, Jill Marie Jones, Sade, Omotola, Liris Crosse, Angell Conwell, Heather Headley.

By dating I do not mean sex. I mean someone they would seriously show to their mother as their girlfriend.

Heather Headley and Sade, by the way, are married to white men. But, like I said, not all white men are alike.

See also: