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In general, Chinese women dress more conservatively, and some what more formally than American women. For example, sun dresses, blouses, and skirts are very popular here. Chinese women also love wearing miniature pairs of heels for every day casual wear. Usually, they'll wear some type of sock or stocking with this. Wearing sheer black tights or a pair of black knee high stockings under denim shorts (or any pair of shorts for that matter) is also pretty popular, so even casual wear tends to get classed up. Sometimes however, you'll see Chinese women wearing these weird flesh tone stockings that don't match their outfits. It's all in an effort to keep their feet clean. I definitely do not recommend wearing flip flops or sandals here. I mean, some people do it, but the ground's so dirty that a lot of the people who do wear sandals wear socks with them too. Other popular fashion items include jumpers and "pumpkin" shorts. Instead of fitting the shape of the leg like normal shorts, these flair out in the center of the "leg" only to taper back in near the leg opening. This creates the shape of a pumpkin, like pettipants. These shorts at longest come to mid thigh.
Pale skin is also popular here. A lot of Chinese women think tanned skin is ugly, so they'll carry parasols during the day or wear sunscreen, which by the way, has skin lightener in it. Despite the sun, I have seen few women with sunglasses, and if a woman wears glasses (just normal glasses), they tend to be rounded and have wire frames in contrast to the rectangular lenses with distinguishable frames that are popular among young women in the states.
Most Chinese women don't color their hair, and if they do, they color it a shade of dark brown or even rarer still, auburn. They also don't get piercings, not even the basic studs (one stud per ear) that most American women seem to have. Thus far, I am the only person who I've seen with a lip ring, and I have only seen two other people with other types of piercings in a city of 16 million. One was a tiny nose ring on a waitress at a night club, the other was a man with earrings.
It seems to me that most Chinese women don't wear any makeup. If a Chinese woman wears make up, it's very minimal, i.e., one thin line of eyeliner, some mascara, or one sheer, mute shade of eyeshadow, but not in combination with one another. I mean, wearing some eye liner and a natural shade of lipstick is pretty dressy here. Furthermore,almost no one wears foundation or powder, even if they need it. Apart from the fact that if you wear makeup, it will melt into your pores because of the heat, I also think that Chinese women wear less makeup because it's so expensive. Our teacher told us that make up here is twice the price of what it is in America.
Having covered hair, makeup and dress, it also seems fit to mention that there is a lack of distinguishable sub cultures, or at least what ever sub cultures may exist amongst the youth here are not distinguishable by fashion for the most part. I've seen three people who *might* have been goth, and I've only seen a few people in sports wear, but then again, sports wear is also not an uncommon fashion statement. I haven't seen any hip hop kids yet.
Even with the apparent lack of sub cultures, there's so much individual style here because people have to haggle at individual enterprises for small-scale production items instead of buying mass produced items from a large chain store like Abercrombie and Fitch or American Eagle. As a matter of fact, many stores here don't have multiple sizes of the same item. What they have hanging is what they got. At any rate, for living in an impoverished country, the women here sure dress nice.
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anonymous
non-member comment
i am a chinese, but I don't think your review is objective at all!