To the average man of every race the woman who most completely embodies the type of his race is usually the most beautiful, and even mutilations and deformities often have their origin, as Humboldt long since pointed out, in the effort to accentuate the racial type.[152] Eastern women possess by nature large and conspicuous eyes, and this characteristic they seek still further to heighten by art. The Ainu are the hairiest of races, and there is nothing which they consider so beautiful as hair. It is difficult to be sexually attracted to persons who are fundamentally unlike ourselves in racial constitution.[153]
It frequently happens that this admiration for racial characteristics leads to the idealization of features which are far removed from æsthetic beauty. The firm and rounded breast is certainly a feature of beauty, but among many of the black peoples of Africa the breasts fall at a very early period, and here we sometimes find that the hanging breast is admired as beautiful.
The African Baganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe states (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, January-June, 1902, p. 72), admire hanging breasts to such an extent that their young women tie them down in order to hasten the arrival of this condition.
"The most remarkable trait of beauty in the East," wrote Sonnini, "is to have large black eyes, and nature has made this a characteristic sign of the women of these countries. But, not content with this, the women of Egypt wish their eyes to be still larger and blacker. To attain this Mussulmans, Jewesses, and Christians, rich and poor, all tint their eyelids with galena. They also blacken the lashes (as Juvenal tells us the Roman ladies did) and mark the angles of the eye so that the fissure appears larger." (Sonnini, _Voyage dans la Haute et Basse Egypte_, 1799, vol. i, p. 290.) Kohl is thus only used by the women who have what the Arabs call "natural kohl." As Flinders Petrie has found, the women of the so-called "New Race," between the sixth and tenth dynasties of ancient Egypt, used galena and malachite for painting their faces. Jewish women in the days of the prophets painted their eyes with kohl, as do some Hindu women to-day.
"The Ainu have a great affection for their beards. They regard them as a sign of manhood and strength and consider them as especially handsome. They look upon them, indeed, as a great and highly prized treasure." (J. Batchelor, _The Ainu and their Folklore_, p. 162.)