Why are there so few characters in the 3DS era FE with facial hair?

[Thor Odinson]

i guess it's destined we must go into battle

[Original Alear]

you guys arguing over asian men growing facial hair?

I can't actually make a response post of any length now because I'm in my cell but if fftf is not fit for such an argument then why, I must ask, does it exist.

also I could have sworn I am gm not nohr.

edit: I am on a cell phone not in jail.

Edited October 3, 2016 by HELP

[Ansem]

naw you're nohr

you suck and you have no speed

[Original Alear]

that's because I'm on my cappy cell phone in this goddamned jail cell.

[claire]

lol I don't even check measurements for clothing I pick the smallest size and pray it's not made for midgets

This is late

Edited October 3, 2016 by Hiyori

[かベリー]

Why are there no women in the 3DS era with facial hair?

[Rezzy]

Why are there no women in the 3DS era with facial hair?

Blatant sexism, obviously

[Original Alear]

there are 3ds women with facial hair. panne Selkie and velouria when transformed.

there is this one fe 7 fan pic I saw where nino, florina, louise, vaida and other fe7 girls had recolored athos beards spliced in. it was amazing.

[Original Alear]

I want to start with an example from my own life, with someone who isn't asian, but a very good friend.

I've known this guy since we were in 6th grade. I still know him now. Definitely one of my best friends - top 5 no doubt. From the time I met him, til I think at least 2013 or 2014, I never saw him with facial hair. Around this time he got employed with the place he works now. Based on his accounts to me, his relationships in the office are very good.

Sometime roughly around 2013-2014, he had a bit of facial hair. A slight beard. Maybe a goatee or something? I don't actually remember what he looked like. When I saw it, it looked really bizarre. Now I know based on how other people who didn't know him as long and didn't see him as much reacted to him, but most likely, the beard did not actually look bad. Did he scrap it eventually? Ya. I think he thought it looked weird too. But in the meantime, his boss actually liked it and encouraged him to grow it.

Maybe you'll say other people were just being polite, but with beards, guys - from what I've seen - almost never like how they look when they first wear them. And people who know them well generally don't either. Damn, one of my friends laid down sick burns on my beard for years after I got it, most likely with extreme righteousness. But sometime after I started college, I started talking about shaving my beard, and my friends there were angry at the thought of it. Because they had only known me with a beard, and the thought of me without one was just as bizarre as me with a beard was to my friends.

I kind of can't help but think that when you do compound various cultural factors, a harsh injunction against facial hair affected how chinese looked at facial hair when it first came back. Perhaps some of them thought it was really, really great - in fact, it looks like there was that feeling for some - but I also think that for some, it was really, really weird to see someone from your life sporting facial hair. You don't have to be descended from Chinese immigrants who were in China during that period to be affected - if these kinds of things have any effect. You don't even have to be Chinese. You just have to have the absence of hair carry over vestigially somewhat after the actual oppression fades for it to take effect.

I suspect things like that affected feelings towards facial hair in general, and I really, really strongly suspect it wouldn't be the first time in history that fairly basic, emotional, in-your-gut beauty standards were modified by rigorous rules about standards of appearance that were meant for other reasons than to just make people look better or worse.

To writ: Hitler. There was probably nothing wrong with Hitler's look prior to the Holocaust. Now, most people probably dislike that look. I know the hitler stache always catches my attention when I see Integrity wearing it, though at those times it's a good feeling.

Look man I know actual east asian guys

I am friends with a lot of asian guys because guess what I'm a fucking asian with asian friends and I work in tech so there's a fuckton of asian guys who are my friends, it's like im surrounded by asian men all the time

last time I asked them if they'd ever grow out a beard they laughed and told me they just kinda can't, or a good one anyway --- a lot of them told me that they grew out really patchy and can't come close to those glorious full beard westerners often sport.

We talking Asian Americans too--lots of dudes of other ethnicities in my office has beards, it's certainly not taboo there, the guys who can grow beards fucking love their beards.

The thing is, in Ancient Chinese culture at least, it was disrespectful to cut hair because they're given to you by your parents, so even if you had a shit beard you still grew it out if it was kinda bad and just try to trim it to look nicer. On special days. So if you have a lifetime of not shaving, yeah, there might be something there. And if you're Guan Yu and got the Guan Yu genes, sure you can have a fucking glorious beard.

Your raw experience probably betters mine, but you might be amazed to know I live in america and know east asian guys. I also walk on sidewalks sometimes. I don't feel like citing specifics because I don't know if you're implying something as ridiculous as I think you are. I admit my current workplace doesn't actually have an asian (and I think we're talking Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean vicinity, not India or Pakistan) but I've actually worked closely with asians before. For ~3 months at one job, the guy who was training me was asian. I mean, this guy was probably the guy I spent the most time with during that period outside my parents. On a side note, he was hilarious, and a jerk, and a great supervisor, and that has nothing I can think of to do with him being asian. He was both great and terrible in a way any "bro" type is both great and terrible.

I actually didn't know hair was considered in matters of filial respect, though I'm not surprised to learn it (I always remember the "you should carry on your affairs as your dad did for some 3 years after he passes away").

It's probably worth saying that I've heard people use phrases akin to "asians can't grow beards" in my hearing, and it really doesn't even register on my mind. It's just that I tend to object more to a generalization when it's online, and I can type, and its phrased in a way that sounds more decided, serious and considered:

eastern standards of masculine beauty is, after all, based on things that asian dudes in general can actually have

My guess from reading your posts again is that I misread how serious you were being here to begin with, and maybe that's where I should stop.

My point isn't that beards are taboo and you'll be fired if you have one and you're asian (except maybe in some places in Japan, at least 5 years ago, because it looks like such laws actually do exist there, or did fairly recently). But I guess that's what you thought I was focusing on. I probably wouldn't have mentioned the queue, since I think that ended by the early 1900s.

Edited October 6, 2016 by HELP

[Thor Odinson]

My problem is that you come here writing paragraphs trying to lecture me about my own goddamn people when I didn't even imply not all of them can't grow a full-face of facial hair in the first place

[Original Alear]

My problem is that you come here writing paragraphs trying to lecture me about my own goddamn people when I didn't even imply not all of them can't grow a full-face of facial hair in the first place

My point is that you implied many can't, and my point is that your opinion could be colored by something other than objective fact (that standards of beauty are based on "what they can actually have.")

And I also have a problem that you think knowing many asians makes you objective regarding appearance. Knowing less doesn't make me objective, of course, and I'm not either.

If you were never trying to be objective from the start, that's fine, but I felt your language regularly couched itself as being somewhat objective in viewpoint.

Your initial suggestion was "those guys with good beards are exceptional people" and my response is "what about the countless guys I didn't post pictures of who may have been exceptional, but not because of their facial hair." I can fetch those photos if I have to.

I'm not trying to "lecture you on your people," but I'm not going to be lectured on you by your people either. If you don't think that's what you're doing by (apparently) implying you have a statistically robust sample size of asian facial hair and I don't, I don't know what you think you're doing.

I'm not looking back to see if you made the first "I have an opinion that's true" posts on this subject, but I know they came before mine.

EDIT-For the record, I was born and raised jewish, received b'nai mitzvah, toured Israel for 2 weeks with my granddad, who fought in world war ii in part because of concerns about jews in europe and actually participated in the liberation of a concentration camp, probably read over a dozen accounts of concentration camp survivor stories, know jews from every continent (I don't mean of every ethnicity, I mean of every continent) except probably australia and central america, spent a summer studying jewish ancestry and immigration at an institute in new york dedicated precisely to that cause, and still would not give you my opinion on jews and expect you to credit it because "I'm jewish and know jews," because I'm not dim enough to assume you have never met a jew in your life and don't know anything about them, even though there are about twice as many asians in the US as jews.

Edited October 6, 2016 by HELP

[Thor Odinson]

I would not give my opinion on jews anyway because I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough about them to make a call there, I would listen to jewish people and be educated on that

But anyway while there is no formal, academic journals on this issue, a quick google search for one confirms my experiences

The sample size in the blog is 25, which isn't huge, but it's big enough to start fitting to T distributions and get meaningful data out of.

If you want sample size though, I may be living in the US now but I am an immigrant from China. I don't think you don't know anything about us, but consider that you don't know enough.

One of my points was, as a Chinese American in a male-dominated industry with a high number of other Chinese people, in America there's no stigma against beard, yet none of the Chinese guys I know have a beard and from actually talking to them about beards (there's a lot of bearded men in my office--so beards come up as a topic once in a while) they literally answered "can't grow one" or something to that effect. One even laughed at the prospect of him ever growing a beard given his genes and the genes of other men in his family. These are discussions I've actually had with my friends and coworkers, not shit I pulled out of my ass.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Rezzy]

To writ: Hitler. There was probably nothing wrong with Hitler's look prior to the Holocaust. Now, most people probably dislike that look. I know the hitler stache always catches my attention when I see Integrity wearing it, though at those times it's a good feeling.

Integrity with a Hitler stache? I'd be interested in seeing a pic.

[claire]

the beard discourse is real

[Original Alear]

I would not give my opinion on jews anyway because I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough about them to make a call there, I would listen to jewish people and be educated on that

But anyway while there is no formal, academic journals on this issue, a quick google search for one confirms my experiences

The sample size in the blog is 25, which isn't huge, but it's big enough to start fitting to T distributions and get meaningful data out of.

If you want sample size though, I may be living in the US now but I am an immigrant from China. I don't think you don't know anything about us, but consider that you don't know enough.

One of my points was, as a Chinese American in a male-dominated industry with a high number of other Chinese people, in America there's no stigma against beard, yet none of the Chinese guys I know have a beard and from actually talking to them about beards (there's a lot of bearded men in my office--so beards come up as a topic once in a while) they literally answered "can't grow one" or something to that effect. One even laughed at the prospect of him ever growing a beard given his genes and the genes of other men in his family. These are discussions I've actually had with my friends and coworkers, not shit I pulled out of my ass.

I mean, maybe I phrased the part about jews wrong. I'm not saying if I said X or Y, you should be like "fuck you knowing jews means nothing!" but if you're like "well I read X or Y and have these reasons for thinking otherwise" I'm not gonna be like "fuck you I know more jews!"

RE the article: that's an explanation of the reason I feel the way I do. I saw those pictures compared to the guys giving the comments, and I thought, "that's a bad beard?" I mean, obviously, they gave legit examples of how their beard doesn't fill out everywhere. But yet, when I look at what they do have, I think, "ya, it still looks good on you."

I'm not actually sure if the first two images correspond to the guys who were quoted first in the article, though. For the record, I mean that the pictures next to Roy Lin and Patrick Patumrat are of guys who look good. I wouldn't consider them gods of beauty, but good looking, yes. Perhaps I'm not the right audience - I'm not picky, and I'm a straight male.

The first pic, I really think the guy in the first pic's patch between lower lip and chin looks kinda too short. But other than that I look at them and I think they look fine.

I mean, maybe the guan yu picture was a seriously bad idea to start my posts, because that's not anywhere close to what I consider the bare minimum for a good beard. I don't mean "every asian dude can have a beard taller than I am," I just mean, "asian dudes can have nice beards." I wanted to post a picture of Guan Yu because he's Guan Yu and I thought I could get away with it - obviously I was incorrect.

Integrity with a Hitler stache? I'd be interested in seeing a pic.

I don't think he actually has had a hitler stache - though you could ask him. I try and refer to integrity as hitler when I can, because I know it makes him feel good. Don't tell him I said this but actually he's a lot better than Hitler, though that might sound hard to believe.

[Thor Odinson]

Asian dudes can decide for themselves what they consider a nice beard. If they don't like what they can grow, they don't have to see that as nice. It's their bodies.

Of fucking course Asian dudes can have nice beards, nobody is implying otherwise--but when a statistically significant number of them don't consider what they are capable of growing to be sufficient to meet their standards of nice beard, maybe a beauty standard wouldn't be based around something that statistically significant subset are not capable of obtaining.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Original Alear]

My opinion: they definitely don't have to grow a beard. They can think it looks bad if it wants. But if a guy asks me about his appearance, he thinks it looks good, and then he says he thinks he looks terrible...I'm not going to waste a lot of effort convincing him he really looks great, but I'm not going to change my mind and decide he looks terrible after all.

But I'm not going to go around saying that since a substantial number of asian dudes can't grow beards and that a standard of beauty which promotes this is based in "what they can actually have."

I'm not going to tell them "you can have a beard like guan yu, start today" but I'm not going to tell make general pronouncements re asian beards that "clean-shaven is better than some half-assed sprinkle beard dust" when holding forth on "eastern standards of masculine beauty" (which typically isn't used to describe how one particular asian guy feels about his appearance, and whether he thinks he looks nice). I'm not going to tell them they do look nice, but if a guy asks me how he thinks he looks and I honestly think he does look good, I'm not going to tell him I don't think that.

I don't know how you actually feel, but you weren't talking about guy's attitudes about themselves before, as far as I can tell. You were talking what you and people in general think about how they looked, I think.

It's kind of weird. Every other post I think you're saying something totally reasonable.

If you want sample size though, I may be living in the US now but I am an immigrant from China. I don't think you don't know anything about us, but consider that you don't know enough.

So let's start with, are we talking about Chinese facial hair, or east asian facial hair, or what? I know you started with asian but I don't know where we are anymore.

Anyway, that's great, I'm pretty sure you're wrong, I don't think I know more, but I'm not going to trust you as an expert on Chinese because you're Chinese. I know the rough, probably butchered, pronunciations of the two provinces where the most immigrants in China tend to come from recently: Fujhen/Foozhen and Guanzhong, and I know a little about Fujhen beyond that. Again I will misspell it, but I know that many people came from china somewhat recently because of Falan Gong. I know the rough stories of 3 chinese musicians who play excellent classical music - members of the beijing quartet, the 4th is not chinese - though not their names - I know a story about a construction project that one of them is involved on with the rest of his family. Back in high school I talked briefly with a - and now I reveal my complete ignorance - asian dude who may have or have not ever been in an asian country called Charles Wise, who - IIRC - worked on research into spinal injuries, and worked with Christopher Reeve when he was injured. I had one conversation with the man for about 2 minutes, failed to email him further questions after getting his email because I was nervous because - as far as I knew at the time - he was a leader in an incredible field of science and I had never taken chemistry or physics, and I still remember his name because he made an impact on me as a person at that time. I think he was working on genetic engineering so people with such severe injuries could someday recover. I suspect if I knew enough about science, I could give you an explanation as to why Wise is brilliant, but honestly I don't. I'm not fact checking or spellchecking that. I don't think that'll impress you, and what would be the point of impressing you anyway?, though I ask you to take it on faith that I haven't intentionally created errors after checking these facts, so let's move on. Somehow I doubt you trust every other Chinese immigrant to Just like I wouldn't trust a ____ as an expert on ____ because they're _____. Let's be straight though - after reading your recent posts, I particularly distrust your thinking, the consistency of your posts here, and your willingness to my opinions or experiences seriously, ever, for a few seconds.

To be clear here - I'm not talking about hair. I'm just talking about "I don't think you don't know anything about us." Here comes to one of the biggest things. Are we talking about Chinese? Asians? People in your office? I've blurred the lines, especially with Wise, who for all I know isn't asian and I'm an idiot, but so have you - you started with asians and have moved, at times, to Chinese. So who is "us?". I really hope when I google Charles Wise he's not from Scotland, because shit I'd look like an idiot.

EDIT-Even worse: I probably got his name wrong. Damn, could be anyone, guess I am an idiot.

EDIT2-Name is Dr Wise Young, of asian descent but looks like he's been all over, so w/e. Met him ~2004-2006. Not a personal friend.

Edited October 6, 2016 by HELP

[Thor Odinson]

I talk mostly Chinese because I live the experience, but the ability to grow a beard in far east asian countries are statistically roughly similar due to similar enough genetic distributions. In this case, it's reasonable to apply this particular observation.

I don't talk about what I feel about the guys' beards. I don't care what people put on their face, it's not relevant to my interests. However, it's what they have said about themselves. A lot of things I said on the topic are roughly paraphrasing what actual dudes have told me specifically. Should I cite everything in fftf now? The "what they can actually have" is meant to be taken as many Asian men do not feel the level of potential their beards are able to grow is satisfactory to them, and therefore it is not part of the beauty standard created in a ethnic group where that is the norm genetically. I apologize if that created a misunderstanding of my intentions, for English is not my first language and neither is control over language expressions my strong suit.

I am both East Asian and Chinese because China is a subset of East Asia. Therefore "us" is not unclear. People in my office also have a significant subset of East Asian males. I'm talking about them--and comparing their (lack of) facial hair to my coworkers who do have facial hair. I specify East Asian because not all Asian ethnic groups have on average low levels of facial hair.

I'm hostile towards your way of presenting your opinions because I feel you were talking over me. You take something observed out of a lifetime's worth of experience within people of that group and try to dismiss it with some things you read somewhere presented in a particularly argumentative fashion. Of course I'm not going to take that well.

Edited October 6, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Ansem]

lel most pedantic argument ever

@ lol at severlan for waiting two days to post his textwall

Edited October 6, 2016 by Mimikyu

[Thor Odinson]

i mean i work in tech

im surrounded by a bunch of pedantic assholes (in the most endearing way possible)

it's bound to rub off

[deleted35362]

cause facial hair always looks terrible

[Rezzy]

cause facial hair always looks terrible

I want a Garon beard on my avatar customization.