Sentence:  There are Spanish girls who look like Tommy Momoyama , brunettes with a Moorish hint of the Orient in their faces ; there are beauties from the Balkan states who <WSD>are</WSD> similarly endowed , and - back in the blessed United States - they were regarded simply as pretty women . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)