I've been an anime fan for years and this question has legitimately never crossed my mind despite being cynical and critical of almost every single factual inaccuracy I come across.
Interesting article all the same!
"Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else."
After that kind of sentence, I really expect some evidence that someone, somewhere has this view.
What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area.
Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AA...
And by the way, what's up with the people posting that Yahoo! question? If it's not a joke, I'm seriously worried about the state of humanity.
"The ultimate reason for the lower Japanese body esteem may perhaps concern broader cultural and historical perspectives. Being part of the West, but non-Caucasians, Japanese people seem collectively to experience high incongruence between their Western-oriented bodily ideals and the perceptions of their own body. "
Japanese body image: Structure and esteem scores in a cross-cultural perspective by Rotem Kowner, University of Haifa, Israel, in: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2002, 37 (3), 149–159
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/jennifer.anderson/courses/c5/s1/K...
Oddly enough -- in 2001 some test footage from Wind Waker was released, showing a Link with some very almond-shaped eyes. The appearance of Link was retooled so they look less almond-shaped and more mukokuseki.
Never thought of it this way, either, and I'm not white.