Describing Skin Tones

[ysabetwordsmith]

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.

Comments

[catsittingstill]

Oh there's a bunch of ways you could get there--Negro regiment in the Civil War, mostly-black neighborhood or family, black college, majority black nation on Earth--or, given that I read SF and Fantasy, a place where people are mostly black because they've always been, a colonized planet or fantasy nation where most people just are black and don't need an explanation or reason.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Another of my examples is The Blueshift Troupers, where most planets have a prevailing race with little if any variation. It's an example of the Founder Effect. Whatever group settled that planet has a background imprint on the physique and culture. Sometimes it was just one, but often a mixed group that later blended. Most of the results are people of color.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Generally the Historically Black college is going to use a lot of descriptors if they want to distinguish one co-ed from another, and not all of them will be height or bust size.