Describing Skin Tones
Aug. 22nd, 2014 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithHere'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.
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.
Re: NO FAIR!
Date: 2014-08-23 05:45 am (UTC)I have never had that! It sounds tasty.
>> And I like the tapioca pearls in bubble tea, which are usually very dark brown. <<
Those can be good, yes.
>> I might describe a non-white character's skin as "like a brown/golden/peach pearl" just to be contrary. I'm used to working with dyed freshwater pearls of all different colors, so that doesn't seem odd at all to me. <<
Those colors make sense to me too. I have also described dragons as resembling black pearl, which has a peacock sheen.