A Gentleman’s Guide to the Shanghai Silhouette

As a gentleman—or at least a reasonable facsimile—I make it a rule never to remark on feminine charm. It’s something like critiquing a tiger's stripes or challenging a mirror to a staring contest. But since we’ve already established that this is a fool’s errand, I shall now proceed with my observations. And if you claim you haven’t noticed, you’re either a saint or a liar, and I don’t see any halo.

Anatomy textbooks, in their clinical cowardice, insist on three body types: the slim, the average, and the husky. Nonsense. There are only two: the Figure 8 (a triumph of curvature) and the Figure 1 (those who run around in the shower to get wet). In the Golden Age of Hollywood, the latter reigned supreme—until the arrival of Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth (see the photo above for illustration), then men suddenly remembered why they’d bothered learning the difference between genders in the first place.

Now, stroll through Shanghai and behold: a city of willowy water lilies, floating between coffee shops and crosswalks with the aerodynamic grace of tissue paper in a typhoon. One half-expects a stiff breeze to launch them clear across the Huangpu, landing them in my Pudong apartment like wayward kites. (Note to self: Close the windows.)

But summer comes, and with it, the Great Veiling. As temperatures rise, Shanghai’s women don their armor—not the modest shrouds of my Levantine ancestors, but a haute couture fortress of UV-proof textiles. The Western world bakes itself into leathery oblivion for a sun-kissed glow; here, women embrace the pallor of aristocracy, as if perpetually auditioning for a Ming dynasty portrait. Walk the streets in July, and you’d swear you’d stumbled into a hijab convention—everyone clad in designer burkas, accessorized with lethal stilettos. The men, of course, remain resolutely, unremarkably… Chinese.

This creates unique challenges for cross-cultural romance. Take the hypothetical Caucasian-Shanghainese couple: their beach day is less "Baywatch" and more "Negotiating a UN Treaty." She’s swaddled in enough fabric to sail a schooner; he’s pinkening like a lobster left in prayer. One begins to wonder if, in a thousand years, we’ll evolve into separate species—the subterranean Morlocks (tan, robust, grumbling about SPF), and the surface-dwelling Eloi (porcelain, ethereal, and—per H.G. Wells’ cheerful prophecy—eventually delicious).

So as you lounge poolside this summer, ponder this: our vanity today shapes the Darwinian comedy of tomorrow. Will future archaeologists unearth our sunscreen bottles and weep for our folly? Or will they simply lick their chops and wait for the Eloi to wander by?