Why do some people think of the French as being swarthy?

[Borealis]

Objectively, French people look no swarthier than other western/central Europeans. But in popular imagination a lot of people see them as being on the darker end for European populations. Why is that? Even myself, I grew up thinking of the French as looking more like south Italians than what they actually do.

[Dentist]

Northern tip of France is swarthier than Southern tip of Britain.


Objectively, French people look no swarthier than other western/central Europeans.

Objectively, their pigmentation sticks out like a sore thumb from UK/Germany.

Also, Normandy being the blonde hotspot is a meme, the local DNA is not very different from neighboring regions.

[Oliver109]

Northern tip of France is swarthier than Southern tip of Britain.

Also, Normandy being the blonde hotspot is a meme, the local DNA is not very different from neighboring regions.

I think Normandy is darker than Pas de Calais and Stratsbourg region, from what i have seen they are not very different from Bretons.

[Tooting Carmen]

France is INTERMEDIATE between the UK/Germany and Spain/Italy.

[Borealis]

France is INTERMEDIATE between the UK/Germany and Spain/Italy.

average French from Paris area seem not too different to UK/Germany

[Borealis]

double

[Tooting Carmen]

average French from Paris area seem not too different to UK/Germany

Yes, but try Marseille, Nice, Montpellier, Bordeaux or even for that matter Clermont-Ferrand or La Rochelle.

[Ouistreham]

Objectively, French people look no swarthier than other western/central Europeans. But in popular imagination a lot of people see them as being on the darker end for European populations.

There is a bit of truth in every stereotype. Average Frenchmen are indeed a tad swarthier than average Britons, it would be pointless to deny it.


Yes, but try Marseille, Nice, Montpellier, Bordeaux.

I suppose you're aware that in those places the ethnic French have been long time ago replaced by Italian, Spanish, Arab and Portuguese migrants.

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

My impression when I was younger came from French noir films.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1q9G2YmVqI

[Colonel Frank Grimes]

I suppose you're aware that in those places the ethnic French have been long time ago replaced by Italian, Spanish, Arab and Portuguese migrants.

How would people know of the ethnic composition of each group in a city if the French government doesn't allow for the collection of data on religion, race, and ethnicity? I can't only think of using a phone book and looking at surnames but that's far from ideal.

[Tooting Carmen]

There is a bit of truth in every stereotype. Average Frenchmen are indeed a tad swarthier than average Britons, it would be pointless to deny it.



I suppose you're aware that in those places the ethnic French have been long time ago replaced by Italian, Spanish, Arab and Portuguese migrants.

Not entirely by any means, though that is more true in Marseille than in the other three. And I find even the French from central regions like the Auvergne and Atlantique don't look especially similar to the British.

[Ezio Auditore]

no one non-retarded thinks that, lol.

[Borealis]

no one non-retarded thinks that, lol.

Americans do

[guyinsf]

I think it's partially from Hollywood's portrayals of the stereotypical Frenchman. They always look for the med type to portray a Frenchman even though med isn't the most common phenotype in France.

[Creoda]

Which people? Swarthy by whose standards? (thankfully the OP is banned).

Idiots get their perceptions from TV/movies/celebs, and many on these forums have agendas, consciously or subconsciously. Most people in reality probably see the French for what they are, between Northern and Southern European looks.

[Komintasavalta]

Well, here's a morph of the French team in the 2019 hockey world cup, which doesn't consist of cherry-picked individuals, and which probably is not full of Jews like French movies. But it still looks very Middle Eastern from our point of view. And it doesn't look woggy just because of the pigmentation, but also because it has high and curved supraorbital rims, and because its upper eyelids are visible.

https://i.ibb.co/HhHwNJD/a.jpg

When I tried dividing the French players into two equally sized groups by wogginess, even the less woggy half still looks really foreign and southern, or it looks like it's British or something:

https://i.ibb.co/WfbKHq8/b.jpg

[sevruk]

for their geographical position the French are really swarthy