Circassian Beauties

[tinker bug]

As a brunette, I sometimes feel like my hair color is boring and plain and I've heard this sentimate on LHC before too, so I thought I'd share with all my brunette sisters this interesting piece of history I found today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_beauties

The article is really interesting, and the picture about a third of the way down advertising Circassian hairdye made me think of LHC and how we always want what we can't have.

Anyway, just wanting to share this little tidbit of hair history :cheese:

[deviantkitten]

WOOHOO!! I am desireable for a concubine! LOL JKJK
Thanks for this article! I hated my natural colour for years! It was just so....blah. And so I dyed...and I dyed, and I dyed, and I dyed. But now, I ahve been growing out all the dyed damage for a little over a year, and I love it. Now that I get to see what my natural colour looks like, it suits me, and it makes my blue eyes really pop. And I have all these natural high/lowlights I never really saw before.
Thanks!

[tinker bug]

LOL, I know what you mean, when I first read it I was like, "...thats kinda gross...but they are pretty...:/"

I'm so glad that someone else is realizing how beautiful their natural hair color is too!

[young&reckless]

Weird, but interesting. But alas I am a Henna copper now.

Much happier even if it would make me lower down in the Harem.

[cmnt831]

That was interesting to read. Thanks for posting it. :)

Guess I would not be as high in the harem either, since I'm growing my silver streaks. :p I also discovered during S&D sessions that I have red and blond hairs mixed in with all the brown - I guess I'm not living up to the ideal.... :p

[deviantkitten]

LOL, I know what you mean, when I first read it I was like, "...thats kinda gross...but they are pretty...:/"

I'm so glad that someone else is realizing how beautiful their natural hair color is too!

LOL it's just my sense of humor. Kinda dark.
But yes, very informative article, and it makes me love my brown hair that much more!

[Katurday]

...wait a minute. Brunette was EVER considered boring and plain?
Oh, right, I'm from the Mediterranean. Well good to know I'd place high in a harem,
but I felt pretty either way.

[Tap Dancer]

Brunettes boring?! *Gasp!* No way! I love my shiny, dark hair! :inlove:

[akevita2002]

I find brunnette the most beautiful color, I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I'm not saying I dislike other hair colors, but the most beautiful in my eyes is dark hair, maybe it's my mediterranean blood which runs through my veins who makes me think and feel like this :D

[pinkbunny]

Interesting - I'd only ever heard of the circus sideshow Circassian Beauties with the pale skin and big afros. They looked more like wild women than sex icons to me! lol

[RoseRed27]

Hmmm. I'm sorry, I just have to say something. Now and then I hear something alluding to this fantasy world in my belly dance practice. I'm not trying to ruin anyone's image of themselves, but I hope we all know this is "Orientalist Fantasy". The image of the sultan being fed grapes by his oiled and perfumed sex slaves is a western creation. The harem was a place where all the children and female members of the family spent their time. The woman who had the most say in this part of the house was the man of the house's mother or grandmother. What's very funny about the fantasy description is that male western strangers (who wrote or painted these scenes) were not allowed anywhere near the harem!

AH! Sorry, this just so upsets me! ^___^ It reminds me that in school the boys would tell stories about the sapphic games that went on at the girls slumber parties. Did some girls play pillow fight nude? Maybe. But it's clearly not an accurate description of the average slumber party. Same thing with the harem. There could have been men who had no living mother, grandmother, aunts, great aunts, sisters, young nephews, nieces, sons or daughters to put in the harem. lol

Back to the topic RoseRed! I think a mane of glossy earth colored locks can be beautiful. We should remember that at any given time in history, somewhere, someone who looks like what we look like was seen as the epitome of beauty! ♥

[LadyJennifer]

I personally like brunette the best, but I always thought my brown hair was too light and boring, until recently.

[Aer]

Very fascinating link! Thanks for sharing. I love all shades of brunette.

[Johanna]

It's funny, I used to have golden blonde hair and my cousin had gorgeous brunette hair. We both wanted the others colour.
I've always thought that brunette hair with light skin was gorgeous :D

[Yozhik]

I love my hair color, although I really wanted and tried to make it auburn for a long while :o

As for women from the Caucasus, yeah, I agree that it's this Western fascination and desire to be titillated by women who were basically sex slaves. Typical fascination with the unknown--I mean, how do you get a more remote and contested area than steep mountain passes smushed between Russia, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire?

I just googled "circassian beauty" to see if I could come up with a picture of one, but other than paintings, all the photographs were of women who were exhibited in traveling circuses and at museums as such, but were actually revealed to be fakes!

All that said, the women who I've met from the Caucasus have been pretty uniformly darkly good-looking :)

[KBG]

<---- would've been traded in for an upgrade, oh dear!:p

[*thecatsmeow*]

Personally I think brunette, blond, red, or whatever its beautiful. I love my dark brown hair, but I also love my husbands long blond hair;) Mostly I just think people look best in their natural color or something close to it. For me, even if I wanted to be blond I probably couldn't because it just wouldn't look right on me. I agree that the story is interesting, even if its just a fictitious picture of harems and sex slaves. There are so many different ideas of beauty around the world, skinny, fat, blond or brunette its all in the eye of the beholder.