By Bobbie Genus

There are quite a few of us who are new to searching outside of your races for a significant other, but there are also many of us who were bitten with the rainbeau bug as youngsters. I am one of them and can recall the moments leading up to when I knew I was into the swirl. I present you with my pop culture journey.

As a child of the nineties it started with the quintessential all American boy, “Saved by the Bell’s” Mark-Paul Gosselaar, best known as Bayside High’s very own Zack Morris. His golden locks, the way his eyes shone when he flashed his pearly boyish grin sent my toddler heart pitter-patter. The long forgotten episode where he kissed Lisa only solidified it. During the same time I would sit quietly in my sister’s room while she and her friends adored New Kids on the Block. While they debated on who had the better moves or sexier style I was more intrigued when blued eyed, boyish Joey McIntyre confessed dreaming of Janet Jackson with the oh so dreamy, modelesque Jordan Knight nodding in agreement.

Preteen me went along for the roller coaster ride that was Shawn and Angela’s relationship on, “Boy Meets World”. Shawn was the classic bad boy who would love them and leave them until meeting Angela. She was the only girl who made him open up his heart and realize there was more to dating a girl than just, “making out”. (This was TGIF on ABC during the 1990s. Making out is all anyone ever had done hahaha!) Although their relationship was a tremulous one, in my mind they were soul mates. At the conclusion of the series their relationship status was ambiguous but to this day I like to think they have gotten back together and are now happily married with children living in a brownstone in Brooklyn. Nsync, the boy band of my generation became the soundtrack to my adolescence at the time. Excitement flooded over me when they would sing bubble gum pop songs to black models in their videos, giving my overly hormonal mind hope that Justin Timberlake too would one day sing those same sappy love songs to me.

Perhaps it was because although still not often seen the media today it was even more rare to see it in pop culture growing up. The uniqueness of it solidified my attraction for the fairer race. It wasn’t often that a white male on a popular movie or prime time show looked lustfully at a black female, even less often that he looked at her with love and adoration.  By the teenage years I found other friends like me, having a sweet tooth for vanilla. We actively sought out depictions of interracial relationships that involved black women in the media. Sharing celebrity gossip like Colin Farrell asking Halle Berry on date or who Matthew McConaughey was caught flirting with behind the scenes of a film, watching movies just to see a white male romantically involved with a black female, admitting to making our Malibu Ken dolls boyfriends of our black Christie dolls when we were younger became a part of our bonding. For one of us who liked blondes there was another who preferred brunettes, freckles to tan, jocks to nerds. At the end of the day we all loved us some white boys.

I had no chance growing up to resist rainbeaus.  It wasn’t featured frequently in the media but enough to catch my attention and intrigue me.  Whether it was Rob Lowe, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Remember JTT?! HA!), Orlando Bloom and more recently Justin Beiber, every generation has their ivory skinned crush that brings you back to the moment you knew you were hooked on the fairer race forever.