The last few days have been… interesting, to say the least. The house here is still in a state of disarray- though it’s mostly livable, now. Internet connectivity is, frankly, abysmal- it’s like being back in the days of dial-up. (It depresses me greatly to think that I am old enough to remember the days of 14.4kbps modems when they were considered “cutting-edge”; by contrast, people ten years younger than me have never known anything but high-speed broadband and wi-fi.)
And then yesterday I came down with either stomach flu or severe food poisoning; either way, it was deeply unpleasant.
However, now that things are finally stabilising for me and for my family here, I did want to take some time to comment on an article written by Matt Forney regarding the pitfalls of dating Indian women.
I got a right good chuckle out of it. And I will state for the record that I agree with much of what he wrote.
Matt raised five points about Indian- more specifically, desi- girls:
- They are unattractive;
- They are prudish;
- They are self-loathing;
- They are feminists;
- They are mentally ill
I’ll vouch for points 1, 2, and 4 openly. They are all basically true. Take a walk down any city street in Calcutta or Bombay or Madras or Bangalore- I refuse to use the newfangled “true” names that the Indian government has forced upon its major cities in an ill-founded attempt to do away with the legacies of the British Raj- and you will be hard-pressed indeed to find any attractive women.
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| The sad thing is, this was apparently a modelling contest… |
This is due to a number of factors. The first, and most important, is diet. The typical Indian diet is completely unfathomable to me nowadays. It is very heavy on starches and carbohydrates, in the form of rice, bread, and potatoes. Indians also love their sweets and their sugar; indeed, if you follow anything approaching a Paleo or primal lifestyle, one of the absolute worst countries you can possibly visit is India. Add to this a relatively sedentary lifestyle brought on by the rising prominence of office-based work among the middle classes of the country, and you have the perfect recipe for a bloated, overweight, unattractive population.
And you can see the consequences of that lifestyle just by looking out the window on a car ride through Calcutta. Both men and women tend to follow that strange “skinny-fat” look which seems endemic in this country, and it is rare indeed that you will find a beautiful or even pretty woman walking the streets in a sari or Western dress.
As for points 3 and 5, well, I’m on less solid ground there and I’m not as willing to make sweeping generalisations as Matt is. So I will simply state that young women of Indian origin raised in the West tend to be liberals. This is actually true of Asian-Americans in general, regardless of ethnic extraction; as a result, a lot of Indian girls start out liberal and only get worse with time. To be honest, I have no idea why Asians in Western countries are liberals, and I’m not anthropologist enough to engage in conjectures on the subject. But I will concede that the self-loathing, mentally defective liberal mentality can indeed create the outcomes that Matt described.
Then Matt’s article jogged my memory. Almost exactly a year ago, Charlie Bushmeister from Single Dude Travel had some similarly acerbic things to say about the dating scene in India. And as I said at the time, I agreed with Charlie’s commentary as well.
The key difference between the two is that Charlie was commenting on Indian girls in India, whereas Matt was writing about desi girls. The two are NOT the same. A desi, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, is basically a person of Indian origin who lives outside of India and has adopted non-Indian cultural norms and habits. As a consequence of India’s massive diaspora between the 1960s and 1990s, you’ll find lots of Indians in Western nations who, other than skin colour, are very difficult to tell apart from their Western neighbours because of the way they dress, talk, and act in public.
In that respect, desis are as far removed from native Indians as an ostrich is from an elephant.
Then Matt argues that the toxic effects of Western cultures are even more destructive to desi women than they are to Western ones. He states unequivocally:
Indians combine the worst of their native culture and the worst of American culture in one disgusting, rancid stew.
Now this is where I disagree with Matt. As generalisations go, this is both crude and inaccurate, because by definition it doesn’t apply to native Indians. Nor does it really apply to desis. There are desis of my acquaintance who have next to no clue about their own native culture and neither want nor need to have anything to do with India. They are effectively just Westerners with dark skin- which, let’s be clear, is not an endorsement of the more puerile aspects of Western culture, which Matt rightly criticises.
Indeed, the Indians who try the hardest to keep in touch with their roots are generally the first-generation Indians who came over here during the Indian Diaspora. They do so because they grew up in India and, like all emigrants to foreign shores, tend to focus as much on the good things from their past lives as on the bad things that drove them to seek better fortunes elsewhere.
As I discovered when I attended a couple of Asian weddings last year, for many Indians my age and younger, their attachment to their country of racial and cultural origin is pretty much skin-deep.
Nevertheless, when it comes to desi women, there is some truth to be found in Matt’s otherwise nearly absurd generalisation. When the worst parts of Western culture get smashed headfirst into the worst aspects of Indian culture, the results are… well, weird.
I suppose the best way to illustrate the problem is with an anecdote. Even though I visit it almost every year, I do not like Calcutta- it is an incredibly noisy, overcrowded, dirty, and generally rather uncomfortable place to be, and it takes at least thirty minutes to get anywhere due to the insanely congested roads and impossibly convoluted street patterns. Never mind walking, it’s neither safe nor healthy.
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| Like this, except much more depressing |
Even so, you can get some idea of what appeals to the rising middle class of India by simply going for a drive from the airport in northeast Calcutta, to the suburbs of the south and southeast.
As we were driving along just such a route, I happened to spot a few posters advertising a New Year’s bash of some sort- in Calcutta, around about this time of year, there’s always a party or cultural event of some sort to be found somewhere.
This particular New Year’s Eve party hinged on the presence of certain minor Bollywood luminaries- and when I saw one of the names on the poster, I had to do a double-take, because it turned out to be none other than Sunny Leone.
Don’t be too surprised if that name rings a bell. As it happens, she was, and remains, a very well known name in the adult film industry. For the past few years she has been reinventing herself as a mainstream actress in Bollywood- with some success, apparently.
(I have no idea whether she actually is a mainstream success or not- I don’t watch or keep up with Bollywood movies. I do find it rather ironic that a desi former porn star happens to look far better, fitter, and prettier at the age of 33 or so than most of her more mainstream homegrown peers. Also, surprisingly, most of this lady’s pictures are merely LSFW)
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| A well-brought-up Punjabi desi girl |
This indeed is what happens when you combine the worst aspects of Western culture with the worst aspects of Indian culture. You end up with a former porn star being the main attraction at a New Year’s Eve party. And hey, if that’s what Indians want, so be it- but don’t then turn around and tell the rest of us that Indian women are somehow “more chaste” or “more feminine” or any other such silliness. They’re not. They’re just like women everywhere else.
And Indian men, who may be some of the thirstiest on the planet when it comes to women, are no paragons of virtue either, if they’re willing to turn a completely blind eye toward the previous, er, youthful indiscretions of a woman who is probably very sweet and charming, but who also made a career out of banging both men and women on camera for money.
This example supports Matt’s comment in certain extreme cases. In India, a native-born woman known for both acting in and directing pornographic films would be locked out of polite society- yet, because Sunny Leone (born Karenjit Kaur Vohra- you can’t get much more Punjabi than this) is a desi girl who “rediscovered her roots”, no one so much as bats an eyelash.
And as I wrote earlier, she might well be one of the nicest, most down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet (whether she is or not, I have no idea), but there’s no getting away from the fact that she was once an enthusiastic performer of hardcore porn. Yet Indians seem content to ignore this.
This is because Indians have an almost bipolar mentality when it comes to sex and female sexuality. This is a place and a culture known for producing some of the most sexually explicit art and literature ever produced- but modern India is still a deeply conservative, sexually prudish, hidebound society where a woman who states openly that no educated man should expect his bride to be a virgin is sued for “defamation” or some such nonsense, simply for speaking what should be a fairly obvious truth.
There are a few things that Matt did miss out. For one thing, native Indian girls- i.e. non-desi Indians- often do have domestic skills that Western women lack, because they’ve been brought up in a much more traditional setting and culture. For another, marriage is taken far more seriously within India than it is by desi communities outside the country. And, perhaps most importantly, the importance of family is absolutely paramount in the Indian mindset, for the most part; this is slowly changing as Indian society inevitably becomes more atomised and secular, but it’s still far more family-oriented than the rather more selfish West.
With that being said, I do NOT recommend that the average Western man drop everything and book a one-way ticket to India to find a good woman to settle down with. This isn’t the Philippines, Vietnam, or Thailand; white men are regarded as outsiders and strangers and are automatically treated with a polite, distant reserve, rather than as the way to a better life for the average woman.
What’s more, the girls here just aren’t worth it in terms of looks- and the women that do have looks will not be able to preserve them over time. I’m not sure what it is about Indian genetics, but over time Indian women really do tend to let themselves go. If you’re aiming to create your own poosy paradise, the subcontinent really ain’t the place to do it.
Indian girls, when married young, can and do make good wives and good mothers. They can be, and usually are, loyal and faithful. BUT- and this is critical- they are like that within the confines and mores of their own culture. Remove them from that culture and any of its touchstones, and put them into the moral and cultural sewer that is modern America, or the even more toxic swamp that is modern Britain, and they’ll start acting like Western women all on their own.
Good, sweet, caring, feminine women do exist- not just in India but all over the world. But don’t for one moment pretend that you can find what you’re looking for just by banging women from non-Western cultures. It’s not that simple. You have to know what you’re looking for; you have to be willing to make sacrifices to achieve those goals; and you have to make compromises to find the right woman to be your wife and raise your children (if that’s what you want). Banging your way through a bunch of desi girls may well be a lot of fun- for certain definitions of the word- but if my knowledge of desi culture is anything to go by, it likely won’t bring you long-term happiness.
15 Comments
Good write up on Matt's column. I put up two extra things when I shared his piece on FB.
6. If she's willing to be seen with you, a white guy, in public, she really and truly hates her parents.
7. When was the last time you saw an attractive, 40 year old Indian (suppose it should say desi now) woman?
True on both counts. On the first- this is less common nowadays, what with ethnic intermarriage- I know of one desi girl who married a white bloke, and in the course of that marriage, there were two ceremonies, one in a Christian church and the other in an Indian temple. It was… odd.
On the second- this is a well-known problem, and it's getting worse. It's a combination of a lousy diet and terrible genetics. And when you take the Indian predilection for starches, sugars, and complex carbohydrates and expose it to the Standard American Diet, the result is bloating on an epic scale.
I live, and have lived, in two of the most multi-vulti cities in Canada and have seen one WMDW(White man, desi woman) marriage. although considering how many consecutive consonants were in her maiden last name, likely Sri Lankan/Tamil/South India.
There are many more 40+ Chinese women who are attractive than 40+ Indian women and you're so right about the diet and its "benefits". I currently live in a highly desi/Indian part of a large Cdn. city and it's just round women and men. The shalwar kameez even has a hard time holding it all back.
Diet definitely has a lot to do with it. It's not so much the oil and fat used in cooking the food- it's the kind of oil used. North and East Indian cooking tends to be very heavy on vegetable and sunflower oil, which is terrible for you. They also eat a lot of rice and starch, which is far worse.
South Indians are a bit better; they use clarified butter for a lot of their cooking, and they're mostly vegetarians- but they more than make up for it by going really heavy on the processed carbohydrates and sugars.
Net result is that there is no region in the subcontinent that is really free of the Indian skinny-fat look.
The Chinese, by contrast, seem to age and maintain themselves far better. Partly it's because of a much higher metabolism- I've seen Chinese girls in Singapore pack away more rice in a day than I used to eat in a week, but they stayed thin.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Comment from an anonymous user which I felt was rather too good to delete:
I am originally from Sri Lanka. Even in those days before I arrived in the US, my mother used to to say that not only are Indian women ugly, but are made hideous by their bad attitude and their unabashed support for feminism. Indian women are violent as well. They inflict violence on their partners on a regular basis. Men married to these viragoes are thoroughly henpecked and as they age they become increasingly mannish. My mother told me not to even touch these women with a 10ft pole. They were and never are marriage material. I have had some negative experiences from female Indian students in graduate school. India is also becoming increasingly feminist with some of most misandryist laws passed in their parliament. Indian parliament recently approved a 33% quota for women to be represented in their parliament. We always thought the most beautiful women hail from North India where they have fair skin, aquiline noses and light hair with piercing eyes. Of course, beauty is at the eye of the beholder.
Btw, Sunny Leone is born and raised in Canada, but I do not know if she is Eurasian or not. [Didact: She's Punjabi by origin- definitely Eurasian.] There is another porn star who hails from the Punjabi region and her name is Priya Rai. She too has retired from xxx-films even though she still strips and escorts for a living. She like Sunny is trying to break into Bolywood cinema as well.
Note to whoever wrote this- my blog has a clear "NO ANONYMOUS COMMENTS" policy. Next time, please publish under a recognisable handle and your comment will be moderated appropriately.
India is also becoming increasingly feminist with some of most misandryist laws passed in their parliament. Indian parliament recently approved a 33% quota for women to be represented in their parliament.
Yes. India has a long and dishonourable history of affirmative action and discrimination in favour of specific ethnic and minority groups. The number of constitutional amendments made specifically for such affirmative-action purposes is simply mind-boggling. It doesn't seem to accomplish very much other than centralising political power in Delhi and removing it from the people who actually matter.
We always thought the most beautiful women hail from North India where they have fair skin, aquiline noses and light hair with piercing eyes. Of course, beauty is at the eye of the beholder.
From what I've seen this is an accurate assessment. The most beautiful women in India generally seem to come from Rajasthan, Punjab, and Kashmir. If you go by international beauty pageant results (which to me are about as useful for judging actual female beauty as playing the fiddle is to putting out a fire), then you'll find that South Indians tend to feature disproportionately on that list.
There is another porn star who hails from the Punjabi region and her name is Priya Rai.
Technically she's from New Delhi.
I am the anonymous who commented above. My apologies for not reading up on the anonymous commenters policy.
My mother always referred to Indian women as toughies. I have yet to meet an Indian woman of pleasant demeanor except 1 who was married and hailed from a christian background from Kerala. With the expanding middle class and improving quality of life amongst this group, women are the most entitled and career oriented. I was reading somewhere that Indian women in the cities are taking the route to freezing their eggs while they pursue their careers. With the misandryist laws taking hold over there, as a Sri Lankan male I have to be careful when visiting the country myself. Although there is a difference between the features of the people between the north and the south, Sri Lankan's look no different than the average South Indian. So, we are very easily mistaken to be as such not only India but in the rest of Asia too. The divorce laws and how the court system in concert with the feminists have had a devastating effect on the men leading to high suicide rates. I have also read that sexual harassment cases against men are on the rise. Indian companies will find any excuse to fire the men. There was a case of sexual harassment on the Mumbai-Delhi shuttle where a CEO of a major firm flying 1st class flirted with a woman while drunk and the woman extracted as much information from him and then sued him for harassment. She received a good chunk of money as a result of the court case. I hear that cases like these are rampant in India these days. I have also heard anecdotally that as a result of the new found wealth of the middle class, they are not afraid to display their wealth with arrogance and opulence. The women in the cities and urban areas drink and smoke, have tattoos and not afraid to dress risque when night clubbing. The Indian men for the most part have been thumbed down by their mothers 1st and then by their wives. There is a deliberate attempt to drive a wedge between the genders in India. For the most part the where well educated women are concerned, Indian men are invisible to them and most have made it clear that they can live independently of a man, unless he is very good looking Bolywood type or a foreigner. I keep away from Indian women as much possible because they are hardened merciless toughies who are not worth my time. A pleasant feminine demeanor will at least make up for their hideous looks!!!
The aunties with the "pottu" and the mustache with the wire rimmed glasses…ughh…I prefer to avoid them too.
The unattractiveness of FoB Indian women (which is NOT genetic since 2nd and 3rd generation Indian women in Britain and the US are actually much better looking) is a cost on ALL men in ALL countries.
Whether you are an American, German, Russian, Chinese, or Japanese man interested only in your own women, those women are 1 point less attractive than they could be due to the large number of Indian women who represent an utter lack of competition for them.
That is right. Even if you are a German man with no interest in Indian women, Indian women are so unattractive that German women are relieved of this competition, resulting in those German women themselves being less attractive.
Thus Indian women (or, to be fair, Indian culture) has knocked off a point on the looks of all non-Indian women too.
This is just like how black women in the US, by becoming obese, have let lower-class white women also become obese without penalty, due to the lack of competition.
But Indian women are so numerous that their ugliness (2 points lower than their full potential) has also knocked off a point from all the other women of the world.
Therefore, all the world's men should be angry at Indian women for not providing the necessary competition that would make other women prettier too.
Have you considered about your own women? Sri Lankan Women? Nobody would even spare a glance over your women or men. It's convenient to show how ugly are other people, when you are blind by one eye, lame and very ugly ( just not ugly!) Can Sri Lankan women or men before 40 or even after 40 can be counted among average looking? When one is such a misogynist, he actually can't help writing good. Direct your writing skills in something good rather than writing shit about other people. I guess this what you have got in your life. Your life is fucked up.
If you can smell the curry, run away in a hurry?
+5 Internetz to you, sir.
As an Indian man who has spent many years abroad, I have to say this piece is on the point. I've been lucky to date some white women who were kind and loving and if not for my stupidity would have been more than happy to be in for the long haul. Enjoyed reading this, thank you.
I appreciate the feedback, this is one of my personal favourite articles out of all of the ones that I've written and generated some good discussion.