Article suggest Black women are less attractive

An article in the latest issue of Psychology Today is causing quite a stir and a backlash by suggesting there is a means by which to measure the attractiveness of Black women.

The article, originally titled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” was written by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. It received such negative feedback online that Psychology Today was prompted to change the title to “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Attractive Than Other Women.”

The title change, however, did little to reduce the outrage at the article’s content. Psychology Today eventually took down the story completely. But even though the story was deleted, outrage continued across all media platforms.

In his article, Kanazawa suggested that objective data validated his supposition.

“It is very interesting to note that, even though Black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, Black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others…Nor can the race difference in intelligence…account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women,” he said.

Through the use of charts and graphs, Kanazawa’s article suggests that Black women are less attractive based on data gathered from interviews. He attributes this to a number of factors, including higher rates of obesity in Black women, more mutations in African genes and a difference in intelligence. He also claimed that Black women have higher levels of testosterone, leading to more masculine features.

Critics wasted no time in voicing their outrage over the article, saying that all beauty is simply in the eye of the beholder and that culture defines what is considered beautiful.

In a rebuttal on Psychology Today’s website, Dr. Mikhail Lyubansky performed his own study on the issue and found that Black women are in fact more attractive than any other racial group.

“It sounds scientific. And it is possible that it is, but Kanazawa doesn’t give us enough information to know and when necessary information is missing, I tend to think the author is trying to hide something,” Lyubansky said.

Across the Internet and on news programs, conversations on the issue of Black beauty swirled in response to the research. Many have suggested that Kanazawa used broadly stereotypical images of Black women to perform his research.