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

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Funny how those songs of nut-brown maids never made the transition from Scottish song to the American market. We may be talking acorns and pecans, but it's not all pails and basins of milk and cream.

"Whiteness" required a blindness because attention was reserved for the "Other". This is why that blindness is unveiled when the body is female. 'Alabaster' and 'saucer of milk' aren't typically attached to Marines.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Funny how those songs of nut-brown maids never made the transition from Scottish song to the American market. We may be talking acorns and pecans, but it's not all pails and basins of milk and cream. <<

Not the mainstream, but they're all over the folk and Renaissance circuits. I encountered one bard who was singing in half a dozen different languages including Gaelic and Welsh, so occasionally they are even available in the original languages.

>> "Whiteness" required a blindness because attention was reserved for the "Other". This is why that blindness is unveiled when the body is female. 'Alabaster' and 'saucer of milk' aren't typically attached to Marines. <<

*snicker* Until you hit the military pr0n.

Re: Well...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

>>'Alabaster' and 'saucer of milk' aren't typically attached to Marines. <<

*snicker* Until you hit the military pr0n.

I think that would have to be military erotica. Note because erotica has to be literary, but because I think 'saucer of milk' and Marine is meta enough/subjective enough to disconnect from porn.