"The supposed blondness and paleness of Europeans is highly overrated". Discuss.

[Duffmannn]

Blondness is scarce everywhere except Scandinavia and the Baltic coasts over 20-25 years, I have even posted threads about how most of my friends or famous people in Spain have lost their blonde hair with the years.

That´s true.

But paleness is not overrated, except if by pale we refer to those milky completely incapable of tan people (that anyways are common even in profound southern europe). If by pale skin we understand a wider range of light-white skin, basically 99% of europeans are pale and this spreads even in the Caucasus and Middle East.

[Universe]

Hair bleaching is relatively common among females(compared to other races), even in Nordic countries.

[Tooting Carmen]

Blondness is scarce everywhere except Scandinavia and the Baltic coasts over 20-25 years, I have even posted threads about how most of my friends or famous people in Spain have lost their blonde hair with the years.

That´s true.

But paleness is not overrated, except if by pale we refer to those milky completely incapable of tan people (that anyways are common even in profound southern europe). If by pale skin we understand a wider range of light-white skin, basically 99% of europeans are pale and this spreads even in the Caucasus and Middle East.

As I said in the OP, the olive and sallow skintones I claim to be rather more common across Europe than many think are far removed from Saudi and Pakistani-type brown skin. Rather, what I mean is lightish skin but with a brunet undertone, people like Francois Hollande and Francois Fillon.

[Voskos]

Depends on the country. In Northern Italy for example I saw a lot more blond or at least celtic-looking people than I expected. Same goes for Russia and Ukraine.

[Samnium]

Didn't you say that in your part of France there are a lot of blondes? Certainly I'd imagine in most of France - at least south of Paris, at any rate - dark brown hair is many times more common than blonde hair.

It's true that where I live there are lot of blondes (amongst the native population) but it's not the "majority", I think in most European countries (except some far northern countries), true blonde haired people are not over 50% for sure.

Also for what I've observed here, I think it's a combination of genetics and environemental factors/foundry effects, the later being quite important for giving this frequency to the blondism.

It's something that others have observed before me by the way.

[Duffmannn]

Pale skinned people, or relatively light haired people (and here I include everyone that has not black hair), are like a 15% of the total world population (and decreasing fastly) and are concentrated in a 90% in the first case and 99% in the second Europe or in european spots all around the world.

So the answer is not, it´s not exaggerated. And there´s even margin to darken Europe and still the differences be very noticeable.

[Samnium]

Pale skinned people, or relatively light haired people (and here I include everyone that has not black hair), are like a 15% of the total world population (and decreasing fastly) and are concentrated in a 90% in the first case and 99% in the second Europe or in european spots all around the world.

So the answer is not, it´s not exaggerated. And there´s even margin to darken Europe and still the differences be very noticeable.

Yes I agree if you go to a larger scale, Europeans are by far and far the lightest pigmented people in the world.

I mean, even Southern Euros have their share of light types, even if nowhere close to Northern Euros, still much more than any other countries in the world.

[Tooting Carmen]

Yes I agree if you go to a larger scale, Europeans are by far and far the lightest pigmented people in the world.

I mean, even Southern Euros have their share of light types, even if nowhere close to Northern Euros, still much more than any other countries in the world.

Well yes, even the likes of Greece and Portugal have infinitely more variation in hair and eye colour than any Asian or African country does. (Excluding those with large White populations like South Africa, of course).

[Samnium]

Well yes, even the likes of Greece and Portugal have infinitely more variation in hair and eye colour than any Asian or African country does. (Excluding those with large White populations like South Africa, of course).

I totally agree.

I would say even phenotypical variation, not that Asians look all the same, but I don't think that you find the variety of "phenotypes" that you see in Europe.

[Tooting Carmen]

Pale skinned people, or relatively light haired people (and here I include everyone that has not black hair), are like a 15% of the total world population (and decreasing fastly) and are concentrated in a 90% in the first case and 99% in the second Europe or in european spots all around the world.

So the answer is not, it´s not exaggerated. And there´s even margin to darken Europe and still the differences be very noticeable.

The thing is that several Spanish (descended) users, including sometimes you, have claimed that darker (in the sense of more brunet) skintones are a small minority in Spain, when in truth easily 20-30% of the native population has them, and the same goes for much of the rest of Southern Europe too. (France and parts of Central Europe also have lower, but still significant percentages). Here are the Spanish examples from the MEP threads I mentioned in the OP:

Isabel Benjumea


Izaskun Bilbao Barandica


Adriana Maldonado Lopez


Dolors Montserrat


Idoia Villanueva Ruiz


Pablo Arias Echeverria


Jose Ramon Bauza Diaz


Jordi Canas


Jonas Fernandez


Iban Garcia del Blanco


Luis Garicano


Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar


Cesar Luena


Francisco Jose Millan Mon


Manu Pineda


Marcos Ros Sempere


Juan Ignacio Zoido Alvarez