Word: paled
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hard to fathom. Hers is a universal beauty, and in the West, despite concerns about the sun's rays and skin cancer, people spend billions of dollars trying to duplicate her café au lait tone. But Asia, from its geishas to its Ganesha gods, has always prized the pale. And in India the desire is a national obsession. You see it in the personal ads, which range from the general ("Whitish girl invites match") to the pinpoint specific ("Suitable alliance invited for ... fair, smart, only daughter having advanced training in footwear molds designing") but consistently mention the aspirant's light...
...certain where this fascination with white skin originated. Thakur and Goenka point to pale-faced conquerors from Britain and central Asia who forcefully instilled a reverence for whiteness. Cultural conservatives complain Hollywood is pushing aside Indian heroes in favor of Westerners all too ready to display their pale flesh. Some sociologists argue that in a country where most people still farm, dark skin is associated with lowly labor in the outdoors...
...possibility that horrifies Watson. People come from around the world to her Toolern Vale property an hour outside Melbourne, and pay to stay the night just to hear her 16 dingoes howl at dusk. During the day the lean, aloof animals, most of them the pale sand color of the desert dingo, lie in the sun in their high-fenced enclosure, snuffling and backing away when a stranger arrives. Having bred them for 20 years, Watson's home is full of photos and paintings of dingoes, but her argument for their protection is based less on sentiment than...
...serendipity is manifold. Several yards away, two Levantine sorts whisper to one another—one, a grey-bearded man wearing a maroon beret, puts his palms on either cheek of his lady companion, and then swoops in to kiss her savagely. Then, just down the way, a very pale white woman appears in Nigerian garb that she has been saving for just the proper occasion: an ankle-long, garish purple gown with green-glimmering sequins. She is emaciated—presumably by choice, not because (like a good many of the Africans she studies) she lacks food?...
...fanatical as they were fierce, but they do like to joke around. "Would you like to see your President Boosh?" asks tribesman Tariq Angar as he drags over a white-bearded elder with a mean squint. Lose the beard and, sure enough, he did look like Dubya around the pale eyes. Angar laughed, but the elder scowled; he wasn't pleased at being likened to the arch-infidel...