The age-old enigma of the attraction of pembantu looking women to Bule men once again gets an airing in the Indonesian blogosphere. This was an question that Unspun tried to deal with quite some time ago (see this link) but till this day puzzles observers as to why relatively well-off and sometimes even good-looking bule men usually have such peculiar tastes in their choice of Asian women partners.
For a good laugh and especially if you are a single Western or westernized woman living in Asia you might also want to entertain yourself with the concept of Charisma Man.
Yin & Yang: Bules & Pembantus
Feb 18th, 2010, in Opinion, by Dikkiman Sujengkol
Expat men in Indonesia and their love affairs with lower class women, opposites attract.
The Friend,
Late one night as my Kampung friends and I were guarding our neighbourhood, the age-old question came up: why does the Bule Man (Bulman), like the Pembantu (maid) face ? We contemplate many such questions as I tap on my Bongo drums and my friends sip their Kratingdaeng, staring out from our little pos jaga (guard post) at the corner of the street under the Jambu tree.
Yin YangIndeed, it is like Yin and Yang: white (or pink), tall, educated, from the city, versus dark, short, from the village. For me, the Bulman’s taste is his own business; that is how our Indonesian system of Bhinekka Tunggal Ika, or Unity in Diversity works. But many big-haired society Matrons, funky university hipsters, and ordinary Indonesian people alike wonder about the strange attraction of the White Man for his maid.
At our guard post, we try to help the country, so for you, my Indonesia Matters friends, I return to this burning question.
Unspun 
@Unspun…
Seems like another trip round the ‘blok’!
These types of posts are cyclical and tend to attract comments in a similar way that finds moths attracted to a flame 😀
To each their own, I say!
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@Rob: Yes they are but a bit of fun, especially when it comes to the ingenuous.
Like I commented at Indonesia Matters, it reminds me of the saying: There is nothing new under the sun; only the history that you do not know
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So… I dated an upper class Manadonese girl for 3 years in the states. I went to visit her family once. While I was there, we went to a party and there was this realy ridiculously attractive dark skinned woman there (although she was high class and quite tall for indonesian) My girlfriend even commented that I was obviously attracted to her.. and that it was a Bule thing. She wasn’t too upset, when normally she would be…
I don’t know what it is about that girl particularly… but the bule attraction to dark skinned javanese is real.
outside of that experience, I found many women in Indonesia attractive, but not so much the actual maids… but many women I saw in the malls in Jakarta, but nothing compared to that one.
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someone who thinks Western men respect women is totally naive. Western men respect women on the superficial level, when it comes to something related to even a little bit personal interests, western men are extremely self-centered. I am not sure if these Asain women would treat or think western men are better than their own country’s men if Western nations are poor undeveloped nations. I am an Asain girl,I am in Australia. Even some Caucasian there confessd why they want Asain girls is because they just want a housemaid, cook and sex workers. I am an Asain girl,I am in Australia at the moment.but,I do not like Western men at all.
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You’re so wrong, it’s sad. Do you have any idea how many “Western men” there are? And how all of us were raised by our families differently? It’s ignorant to say what you’ve said.
You don’t like Western men, fine. It is your preference.
I don’t like blond women, myself.
But, at least I am mature enough to not blame blond people for my preferences.
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While I dunno about “slutty”, one of the common themes of these articles is skin colour.
The mainstream Indonesian standard of beauty is to be honest, very limited. If you see an Indonesian beauty pageant, all tend to be extremely fair, fairer than you’d expect given the general brown-ness of the broader Indonesian population. It’s amusing that in both Indonesia and Malaysia, which both suffer from a significant degree of anti-Chinese racism, they seem to prize women who look quite Chinese in terms of pale skin.
Bules don’t necessarily follow this subjective standard of beauty, and why should they? Anyone who traverses the many different islands of Indonesia will see dark-skinned cewek kampung who are more real, and more beautiful, than so many of those women who become celebrities more by virtue of their light skin than their beauty.
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The answer is fairly simple, if a Bule man found fair skin attractive would he not choose a Bule Woman over an Indonesian woman? The Bule men who come to Indonesia looking for romance obviously are indifferent to fair skin. Maybe a better question to ask is why are Indonesian so obsessed with their own degree of browness.
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Huaahaahahaha ….. true indeed. I met a lot of Bulman (Indonesian) wives and they look strikingly alike, dark brown skinned, so so face, long sleek hair cascading into their mini blouses, wear mini everything, eyes wild, pouting mouth, act like sluts; I don’t think they all came from kampungs since I know one is a VP of a big corporation and the other is an engineer turned big shot in an UN organization.
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I’m chinese indonesian, my mom (46)gets alot of flirty looks from aussie white men whenever she visited Australia…even great retail services and heaps of freebies just because she looks like thai woman (so my dad speaks) perfect olive skin, brown-ish hair, cello type body, big eyes and full lips (not your typical average chinese look, perhaps because she had mongolian mixed blood from her ancestor) while i have the very oriental look from my dad genes. I noticed how different people treated you when you got what they think is the perfect exotic woman. I was quite upset when the same customer service spoke to me in a very different way until mom came and i translated what she wanted to ask and by then he realised that she’s my mother. It was totally a turn off and he didn’t get any $ from me.
According to my mom, she feels pitty for white men… so does one of my girlfriend who has a caucasian friend that dated asian chic. They say “White men could never notice the thin line between exotic and ugly”. There are a very thin line between exotic and ugly, unfortunately what have been seen so far was all the white male with Ugxotic(ugly exotic / the maid) type, they don’t do their homework well.
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“If you told me you get two Chinese hookers in black lace and garters if you can read through this [printed music], I think I could manage.” -Greg Lake (my HERO!) Actually I put the clause in my rider, and that is why I am a consummate musician.
“Slutty. Looking. Asian. Women.” What part of this do you not understand?
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