One day over this past summer, Andrea and I were binging shows and came across an import from Netflix Asia. I remembered the conversation with Mom, and I asked Andrea, "Do you think those Asian actors are good looking?"
Immediately suspicious, she gave me a side-eye glance, "What are you getting on about?" After relaying the conversation with Mom, I continued to explain. Typically, studios want a pretty face on either the big screen or on TV. Since these shows are a product of Asian production shops, you would assume they'd choose actors that fulfilled the Asian concept of beauty. Alternatively, if these Asian studios were ultimately targeting a western audience, did they default to what they perceived were western ideals of beauty in their cast selection?
Are there universal standards of beauty? Some sources say it can be distilled down to a mathematical ratio of facial symmetry. Based on this, public figures were run through the algorithm and it was determined Michelle Pfeiffer's features were the most symmetric. I'm certainly not going to disagree that she's very pretty.
The discussion inevitably turned to individual perceptions of beauty. She then fatefully asked, "So, what qualifies as pretty to you?"
Suddenly, Captain Picard was on his feet, yelling in my left ear, "RED ALERT! BATTLE STATIONS!", while Admiral Ackbar was in my other, "IT'S A TRAP!" My tactical brain kicked in, simultaneously evaluating multiple scenarios and gauging the extent of damage likely to be sustained. Keenly aware of the lengthening silence, I called upon my inner Sun Tzu, turning a pending scene of carnage into an innocuous draw if not a precarious victory.
With all the suaveness I could muster, I calmly replied, "Well. She'd be about 5 feet 10. Red hair. Blue eyes. Freckles. Answers to Andi."
"Pfft. Whatever!" The eye-roll she gave me was seismically epic, setting off earthquake alarms up and down the Atlantic seaboard.
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