Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Describing Skin Tones

Here's a mostly tongue-in-cheek post about describing fair skin in some of the ways that dark skin is often described.

I have actually used "marzipan" as a skin tone. Also cream, peach, toast, porcelain, bisque, alabaster, grub (as in insect, not food), and uncooked bread dough. (Some of the descriptions were from a less-than-positive perspective.) Also in the white-people range are the pinkish-fair tones that are not copper, so things like ruddy, flushed, coral, and rosy apply.

Kay in Schrodinger's Heroes is Hispanic, but has fair skin, which I have described as vanilla latte: a dark cream or the palest possible brown.

Then there was the time I spent over an hour hunting around for synonyms and metaphors of "brown" that were based on things NOT associated with the slave trade, preferably things relating to African culture. Kola nut was a favorite. Ebony, which is dark brown to black, is a sacred wood in Africa and thus legit.

My desertfolk often have two or three colortones combined: rose-gold, rose-mocha, toasted-peaches-and-cream.  It's very rare to see truly pale skin or very dark skin in the Whispering Sands, but they cover an enormous range in between with subtle and complex variations of ruddy, shadowy, and tawny hues.  Very beautiful.  Oh, and to them "melon" is specifically the color of ladyparts and they make jokes about it.

Tags: ethnic studies, humor, linguistics, networking, reading, writing
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  • 7 comments
rowyn

rowyn

August 23 2014, 02:39:27 UTC 6 years ago

I find white-people-skin annoying to describe because it's the such a wishy-washy color. It's not white. It's not even a shade of white, like cream or ivory (or mashed potatoes, or mayonnaise). It's a light yellow-orange. "Pale peach" is close. Apple sauce is close-ish too, although "the inside of an apple" is way too pale unless one is describing a Caucasian vampire or corpse. Baked (and not dyed) marzipan is probably about right too.
marina_bonomi

marina_bonomi

August 23 2014, 08:10:09 UTC 6 years ago

I've used 'chalky' forsomeone I saw with...well, the Northern/British version of a very light skin tone, no olive or pink tinge visible (at the time I wondered whether the lady in question might have been ill), and, in winter, I've been described as 'mozzarella'- or 'meadow mushroom'-colored (pale with a greenish undertone).
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

August 23 2014, 08:27:42 UTC 6 years ago

I've used "chalky" too. I hadn't stopped to think that very pale olive would indeed be pale with a hint of green.
jeriendhal

jeriendhal

August 23 2014, 13:42:19 UTC 6 years ago

I think I'm glad I stick to writing Furry characters for the most part.
ysabetwordsmith

Well...

ysabetwordsmith

August 23 2014, 22:18:48 UTC 6 years ago

That's fine. Fur is easier to describe in some ways. I like furries too. Riffing on our food metaphors -- peach, kiwi fuzz, coconut coir, artichoke heart.
valarltd

valarltd

August 24 2014, 02:06:13 UTC 6 years ago

I got in trouble for creamy. I used it too close to where I described her bosom as "mounds." So the reviewer got hung up on her creamy mounds...

rowangolightly

Finally, the perfect occasion...

rowangolightly

August 25 2014, 21:18:05 UTC 6 years ago

...in which to tell my skin tone anecdote.

Prefaced with a bit if info: I am a true mutt. My ancestry is Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh, German, Navajo, Cherokee and Mohawk. This is not in descending order because the only ancestry I know for certain is that my Dad's Grandmother was German, his father was Irish and Scottish and that my Mother's Grandmother was an Irish woman straight off the boat who married a Cherokee saddle maker and that my Mother's Father was full Navajo (a fact we didn't discover until about 15 years ago and a fact which, oddly, ended my sister's marriage.)

All that to say that even though I am 1/4 Navajo, I am white. Although I am a bottle redhead, I have a true redhead's physicality, skin tone and temperament.

I have always quipped that my skin tone is "underside of dead fish white" which, while not quite accurate, always gets a laugh.