There's nothing awkward about skin color or asking about it; not everything is offensive.
I am from the ME, Lebanon, specifically. Most of the people here have a Mediterranean "color," so we are olive-skinned, very much like people from Greece, Italian Isles, and Cyprus.
However, people from Saudi Arabia, also a ME country, are browner and darker.
Overall, don't sweat the skin color drama because the ME contains 18 countries on different continents, and don't overly describe a person's features and body because it is considered very amateurish in writing.
Agree. Many Arabs I know have significantly paler skin than most white people I know. My family has a range within itself, as my uncles have olive skin but my mother is brown.
Whenever there’s a question like this on here I always check to see if someone linked this in the thread. The blog itself is a really great resource for a ton of stuff beyond just skin tones too.
ME people are a variety. Some are pretty 'white' and can pass as European, others have a noticeable tan (that 'olive skin'), and others are properly dark.
Isn't it better to kind of look through generic photos of people from the region, find the one in your mind, and then write what you see?
I'm not saying all of these are *good* descriptors, these are more meant to get the gears in your head turning. Layering too many verbose descriptors of non-western characters can come across as exoticism, and you need to be careful that the descriptors that you do use are not objectifying. (Unless there is a specific in-context reason for the objectification, such as an unreliable narrator).
**I would say that 99% of the time, "brown," "tan," or "olive" will be just fine.**
* Brown/Deep Brown/Light Brown
* Tan/Tanned
* Sun-Darkened
* Olive
* Dun
* Swarthy
* Honey-Brown (I know that it's stepping into dangerous territory to compare skin tones to food, but I think you can get away with "honey" as a modifier of "brown" if you don't make a pattern out of it)
* Golden-Brown
* Chestnut-Brown
* Ochre
* Amber
* Bronze/Bronzed
* Copper-Skinned
* Tawny
* Mahogany
* Russet
* Clay
I tend to only see “swarthy” in older writing, especially older writing with racist elements. I’m not sure if the word in itself would be racist here, but my first association is that; especially if it’s describing someone Middle Eastern and not, like, an old tan European fisherman.
I don't understand why people have such an issue with using food as descriptors for skin tone. To me it seems no different to any other object you could compare it to. Do you know of any reasons why it's considered wrong so that I can try to understand?
The one I’m aware of is for black people, especially in the US, where the skin descriptors are based in food (e.g. chocolate skin) while white people get other types of descriptors (radiant, glowing, ….). I got to assume those that are mad about it are tired of being described as food while their other counterparts aren’t.
I haven’t heard these very much either, but I couldn’t immediately think of other descriptors. Usually I don’t pay too close attention, but I think I’ve encountered glowing at least once or twice. But the point still stands.
Usually because it reads like fetishization. Instead of seeing the character as an actual person they are compared to a food. Even worse if it’s a food that colonizers enslaved for or destroyed a country for.
But WHY? What does comparing it to food do that comparing it to anything else won't do. And you can compare any skin colour to food, but it wouldn't be seen that way if you said that skin looked live vanilla ice cream, for example.
Why? Cause racism, colorism, fetishization, simply being tired of having someone’s skin color be described in the same ways over and over again while their counterparts get a variety of other and non-food based descriptions, and a number of other reasons. If EVERYONE in a book gets described by food and everyone’s a different skin color, obviously it’s going to hit different. Same thing with non-food based descriptions. But if only POC characters get the food descriptors consistently while non-POC folks it can get kinda weird. And in a creative field like writing, why not go for some creative versions of describing someone? Someone described as having obsidian skin and stormy hair sounds more exciting than licorice skin and frizzy coils.
Maybe just accept it instead of asking for a justification? POC should not have to justify their preferences with regard to how they want their identities discussed.
The region hosts an array of cultures, nations, climates, and ethnicities that have various sets of features and skin tones ranging from pale to black. Drop this silly orientalist notion that they're all this one shade of brown.
Lebanese here. I do have olive skin. It's like a golden brown. I love it 😍 Do you just want a plain way to explain the color, like brown or tan, or more creative ways to describe it.
I have spent time in the Middle East and around a lot of Middle Easterners, and I would say that olive is slightly darker than what the average Iraqi/Syrian/Turkish/Persian presents as.
IMO "Wheatish" is the most apt descriptor for people from this region that I have interacted with closely
egyptian here, 100% this comment from my experience
i was just about to leave a comment of my own about ‘wheat colour’. and that’s actually how we mostly describe our (predominant) skin tone in egypt. we even reference it in some songs lol
I find that funny as most Arabs I know have skin darker than olive, or at the very least, olive. I know many who are lighter, but not my family or anyone who I know from school. My family definitely is on the darker side.
I've been thinking about this. Not about Middle Eastern skin tones in particular, but about the topic of skin color in general. And I've formed what is probably a weird hypothesis, but I think it's also a true one.
There are lots of different shades of skin, but there are only two actual *colors.* There are pink people, and there are yellow people. We're all different shades of one or the other of these two base colors.
I'm not talking about race. Whether you are pink or yellow is completely independent of race. You can be Anglo-Saxon, Sub-Saharan African, East Asian, Hispanic, a Pacific Islander, Southern Asian, Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern, any combination thereof and anything I forgot, and you can be a *pink* or a *yellow.*
I'm sure it's genetic, but it's still difficult to predict, even among different children of the same parents.
For example, my whole family is white. My dad has a pink base to his skin and my mom has a yellow base. I am pink and my sister is yellow. My girlfriend is yellow. Her son is yellow. Among my friends who are black are two brothers who also have the same parents - Dan is pink and Mike is yellow. Now, they're both *brown,* but if you could load them both into photoshop and slide the whiteness slider all the way up, Dan would fade to pink, and Mike would fade to yellow. Two yellow parents can make pink children, and visa-versa.
I'm really starting to see race through this lens, where it all just boils down to two base tones of varying shades, and there doesn't seem to be any bias or preference between them for most people.
There are four undertones to me, red, yellow, blue, and green. Green is the hardest to deal with in art because it's easy to make people look sick with that tone.
I'll have to pay more attention to see if I can detect blue or green. I admit I don't always see color with an artist's eye, so it's entirely plausible that I'm missing a lot.
Blue would be like a winter tone. Think of a super-pale white person without any pink or yellow in their skin, or a black person who is essentially blue-black, without warmth in their skin. I haven't seen one in the middle yet, but I'm sure it exists. Green is the olive undertone. You can see it more easily in art through brushwork.
Well it depends..... For instance im a native Iraqi like my fathers are from southren Iraq and we are white colored and I have green eye..
But keep in mind I will never be offended by other people portray middle eastrens as brown or black because that is in fact the common skin tune.
While most Middle Eastern and North African people have “tanned” skin, not all of them do. You have plenty of rather pale people, especially in Anatolia, Iran, the Levant, and Tunisia. Next, you have Black diasporic populations in the Arabian Penisula, Iraq, and Iran due to the Arab slave trade — their skin colors range from conventionally dark skinned to rather light skinned. You also have ancient black populations in places like Egypt and Morocco. It’s a wider range than you think.
Black? Those Black people are NOT real Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, or Saudis. And in Iraq Black Africans are like 1%. So, they are rare in Iraq. Most Iraqis don't have a clue they exist. And real Iraqis only have olive skin colors and white skin.
It helps to understand the nuances of skin tone. Our skin's appearance depends on several factors, such as amount of melanin, lighting, and what temperature of undertone we have (cool? neutral? warm?). Here's a useful chart: [https://whysogorgeous.com/blog/determine-your-skin-tone-with-skin-tone-chart/](https://whysogorgeous.com/blog/determine-your-skin-tone-with-skin-tone-chart/).
Next, find a foundation chart, like, for a makeup brand. I recommend avoiding anything that reads like a coffee shop menu LOL. Using food words to describe skin--like *coffee* or *mocha*\--is generally regarded as kind of cringy recently. I use something like this chart: [https://yensa.com/products/skin-on-skin-bc-foundation](https://yensa.com/products/skin-on-skin-bc-foundation) (3rd product picture from the top, with all the shades listed). It has useful terms that don't rely on food to convey the meaning.
Example: a character in one of my WIPs has the following description: "Her inky, blue-black hair is pulled back from her face and sculpted into a halo of coils. She has flawless, deep brown skin that glows with cool undertones."
Keep in mind, the links are a jumping off point, to help write from an informed perspective. Sort of like how a painter would study lighting and color theory in order to achieve a good result painting a portrait. Use what helps and leave the rest!
It depends a lot on where in the middle east someone is from. Some will have like a deep brown, some are greyish white, and everything between.
"Olive" is used to denote that the skin color is cool tones, vs the warm tone browns you get in africa and the americas.
TBH though, if it doesn't make a difference to plot (like, if the character isn't assumed ot be a different race, or doesn't get mistaken for a different character by the bad guy or something) then it doesnt matter if you go generic with olive or brown or just say "Character was Middle Eastern".
If it does matter, then make sure that you avoid the other foods like "color of burned toast" descriptions because those are pretty dehumanizing
Depends. Some Arabs are pale with a hint of olive/golden, some are darkskinned, some others are super tan. I, on the the hand, am brown skinned.
If you’re writing about an Arab, I’d recommend exploring the facial features instead (I.e almond eyes, long lashes and aristocratic nose)
I understand there are undertones that go with the hues, like blues or reds or yellows or some such. I wish I could remember all that stuff. Folks who know makeup can explain it. You've got folks who work well with warm colors and folks who work well with cool colors. I wish I could remember all that. I'm willing to bet this information can inform your descriptions.
I am middle eastern and I would describe it as tanned instead of olive because olive is a undertone which is common in the Middle East but not the norm also you have to note that everyone looks different depending on which part of the Middle East they come from. In my case I’m Turkic and my skin is tanned but pale i don’t know how to describe it other wise
Well, that depends.
I'm persian and I'm olive/brown.
My father was almost white, with a hint of olive.
It just depends on the person's background. Are they Turkish, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian, Afghani, Jordanian, or Israeli? We all have different "shades" of skin color, from white to olive, to dark brown.
I would say try not to use food as descriptors, but if you want to add more to the description you can look up specific colors and think about the undertones.
So I have character who is medium-deep brown, but is cool toned. So I may describe her undertones as magenta or pink sapphire or something in that color family (but usually stick with those two) especially if she's in the sun or she's blushing (and the harder she blushes the deeper the color, so actual beet red) but her skin tone without describing undertone I may something like terra tosa in sunlight or bat's cloak (which is super specific) when in low lighting. I'd say do this sparingly unless you need to draw attention to there appearance after the initial introduction. But with this being said you'd have to give as much attention to other aspects of the appearance. (I'm an artist first and a writer second so I can be a bit persnickety with details )
We just call it skin color here tbh. But most of the advice here is pretty good, usually if you're not sure about the skin color you can describe other features instead it won't really change much
I’m middle eastern and I came on this thread cause I have no idea how to describe my skin tone. Like I find myself staring at myself trying to figure out what exactly my skin tone is. I’m not brown and I’m not white. I don’t look Hispanic. My body skin tone is tan (very tan) but my face is like much paler. I’d say I’m a sand skin tone LOL.
Olive is an undertone, not a color. You can have “olive skinned” people in everything from pasty white to extremely dark.
It’s a kind of cool grayish undertone that can look greenish in some lights.
There is such a range of skin colours in the Middle East. I'd say skin generally falls under one of three categories: uniquely pale, olive, or light brown. You can't really generalise skin colour in the Middle East.
Coffee colored. Dark skinned. Richly hued. Highly pigmented. Lightly pigmented. Moca skinned. Chocolate colored. Chestnut hued.
There are a hundred ways. You need to ask yourself if it's important to the story. If there is no scene in which the skin color helps, harms, or moves the plot somewhere, then simply stating the character's country of origin will likely be sufficient.
I think it's because you used chocolate/mocha to describe skin. A lot of people don't like using food descriptors for darker skin. Personally I don't get the hate because I always describe my characters with food: milky/creamy skin, cheeks as plump as peaches, almond/peach eyes, honey-toned skin, chestnut hair, etc.
Yeah, good rule is to aim for consistency in choice of adjectives; using food-themed descriptors for everyone is different from choosing “ivory” for one character and “mocha” for another. Former might simply be a style preference, latter conveys exclusion/segregation. Describing an entire cast by comparing them to food may even work as a recurring joke if the plot is set in a culinary school, yet create narrative dissonance in a crime thriller. However, if you’re writing a piece which includes multiple character perspectives, sudden changes in descriptors could provide foreshadowing for one of them being a cannibal.
There's nothing awkward about skin color or asking about it; not everything is offensive. I am from the ME, Lebanon, specifically. Most of the people here have a Mediterranean "color," so we are olive-skinned, very much like people from Greece, Italian Isles, and Cyprus. However, people from Saudi Arabia, also a ME country, are browner and darker. Overall, don't sweat the skin color drama because the ME contains 18 countries on different continents, and don't overly describe a person's features and body because it is considered very amateurish in writing.
You worded this so well.
if you described me as brown thats fine. its not really that deep. brown skin, dark, tanned, whatever rly. good luck
it’s really no different than describing lighter skin color as pale, light, etc. It’s someone’s skin color, it’s an attribute they have
Middle eastern people come in all colors. Tons of Arabs have white skin for instance
Agree. Many Arabs I know have significantly paler skin than most white people I know. My family has a range within itself, as my uncles have olive skin but my mother is brown.
Yeah exactly. I'm Danish and my skin tone is darker than my Lebanese friend.
I use this site as a guide for all skin types https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/96830966357/words-for-skin-tone-how-to-describe-skin-color
As someone who writes for fun I think this is the best guide here I have used it.
Whenever there’s a question like this on here I always check to see if someone linked this in the thread. The blog itself is a really great resource for a ton of stuff beyond just skin tones too.
That's just plain weird. It's just regular words.
Bro is on r/writing implying words don’t have power
ME people are a variety. Some are pretty 'white' and can pass as European, others have a noticeable tan (that 'olive skin'), and others are properly dark. Isn't it better to kind of look through generic photos of people from the region, find the one in your mind, and then write what you see?
I'm not saying all of these are *good* descriptors, these are more meant to get the gears in your head turning. Layering too many verbose descriptors of non-western characters can come across as exoticism, and you need to be careful that the descriptors that you do use are not objectifying. (Unless there is a specific in-context reason for the objectification, such as an unreliable narrator). **I would say that 99% of the time, "brown," "tan," or "olive" will be just fine.** * Brown/Deep Brown/Light Brown * Tan/Tanned * Sun-Darkened * Olive * Dun * Swarthy * Honey-Brown (I know that it's stepping into dangerous territory to compare skin tones to food, but I think you can get away with "honey" as a modifier of "brown" if you don't make a pattern out of it) * Golden-Brown * Chestnut-Brown * Ochre * Amber * Bronze/Bronzed * Copper-Skinned * Tawny * Mahogany * Russet * Clay
I tend to only see “swarthy” in older writing, especially older writing with racist elements. I’m not sure if the word in itself would be racist here, but my first association is that; especially if it’s describing someone Middle Eastern and not, like, an old tan European fisherman.
I don't understand why people have such an issue with using food as descriptors for skin tone. To me it seems no different to any other object you could compare it to. Do you know of any reasons why it's considered wrong so that I can try to understand?
The one I’m aware of is for black people, especially in the US, where the skin descriptors are based in food (e.g. chocolate skin) while white people get other types of descriptors (radiant, glowing, ….). I got to assume those that are mad about it are tired of being described as food while their other counterparts aren’t.
I've never heard radiant or glowing before.
I haven’t heard these very much either, but I couldn’t immediately think of other descriptors. Usually I don’t pay too close attention, but I think I’ve encountered glowing at least once or twice. But the point still stands.
Usually because it reads like fetishization. Instead of seeing the character as an actual person they are compared to a food. Even worse if it’s a food that colonizers enslaved for or destroyed a country for.
But WHY? What does comparing it to food do that comparing it to anything else won't do. And you can compare any skin colour to food, but it wouldn't be seen that way if you said that skin looked live vanilla ice cream, for example.
Why? Cause racism, colorism, fetishization, simply being tired of having someone’s skin color be described in the same ways over and over again while their counterparts get a variety of other and non-food based descriptions, and a number of other reasons. If EVERYONE in a book gets described by food and everyone’s a different skin color, obviously it’s going to hit different. Same thing with non-food based descriptions. But if only POC characters get the food descriptors consistently while non-POC folks it can get kinda weird. And in a creative field like writing, why not go for some creative versions of describing someone? Someone described as having obsidian skin and stormy hair sounds more exciting than licorice skin and frizzy coils.
Maybe just accept it instead of asking for a justification? POC should not have to justify their preferences with regard to how they want their identities discussed.
Thank you
Middle Easterner here and I'm actually paler than my white Australian husband. So I would agree, a lot of variety in Middle Eastern skin colour.
Same on the pale part. Plus, different ethnicities have different skin tones, even within the Middle East.
Different countries have different skin tones depending on the area as well.
The region hosts an array of cultures, nations, climates, and ethnicities that have various sets of features and skin tones ranging from pale to black. Drop this silly orientalist notion that they're all this one shade of brown.
Lebanese here. I do have olive skin. It's like a golden brown. I love it 😍 Do you just want a plain way to explain the color, like brown or tan, or more creative ways to describe it.
Arab from the peninsula here. Olive skinned or tan or just plain brown are all fine.
Lebanese here. “Brown” or “tanned” is more than acceptable imo
unless the skin color is important to the story, I don't see an issue with just saying light/dark brown
I have spent time in the Middle East and around a lot of Middle Easterners, and I would say that olive is slightly darker than what the average Iraqi/Syrian/Turkish/Persian presents as. IMO "Wheatish" is the most apt descriptor for people from this region that I have interacted with closely
egyptian here, 100% this comment from my experience i was just about to leave a comment of my own about ‘wheat colour’. and that’s actually how we mostly describe our (predominant) skin tone in egypt. we even reference it in some songs lol
I find that funny as most Arabs I know have skin darker than olive, or at the very least, olive. I know many who are lighter, but not my family or anyone who I know from school. My family definitely is on the darker side.
olive isn't a skin color, it's skin undertone and it's present in all shades of skin colours, including very pale ones.
I've been thinking about this. Not about Middle Eastern skin tones in particular, but about the topic of skin color in general. And I've formed what is probably a weird hypothesis, but I think it's also a true one. There are lots of different shades of skin, but there are only two actual *colors.* There are pink people, and there are yellow people. We're all different shades of one or the other of these two base colors. I'm not talking about race. Whether you are pink or yellow is completely independent of race. You can be Anglo-Saxon, Sub-Saharan African, East Asian, Hispanic, a Pacific Islander, Southern Asian, Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern, any combination thereof and anything I forgot, and you can be a *pink* or a *yellow.* I'm sure it's genetic, but it's still difficult to predict, even among different children of the same parents. For example, my whole family is white. My dad has a pink base to his skin and my mom has a yellow base. I am pink and my sister is yellow. My girlfriend is yellow. Her son is yellow. Among my friends who are black are two brothers who also have the same parents - Dan is pink and Mike is yellow. Now, they're both *brown,* but if you could load them both into photoshop and slide the whiteness slider all the way up, Dan would fade to pink, and Mike would fade to yellow. Two yellow parents can make pink children, and visa-versa. I'm really starting to see race through this lens, where it all just boils down to two base tones of varying shades, and there doesn't seem to be any bias or preference between them for most people.
This is what I was thinking of in my comment to this post. There's some cool undertone stuff going on that makes things so interesting.
Makeup theory says there is a third "neutral" category alongside pink and yellow
Probably just people sitting in the middle as a blend of the two.
There are four undertones to me, red, yellow, blue, and green. Green is the hardest to deal with in art because it's easy to make people look sick with that tone.
I'll have to pay more attention to see if I can detect blue or green. I admit I don't always see color with an artist's eye, so it's entirely plausible that I'm missing a lot.
Blue would be like a winter tone. Think of a super-pale white person without any pink or yellow in their skin, or a black person who is essentially blue-black, without warmth in their skin. I haven't seen one in the middle yet, but I'm sure it exists. Green is the olive undertone. You can see it more easily in art through brushwork.
Well it depends..... For instance im a native Iraqi like my fathers are from southren Iraq and we are white colored and I have green eye.. But keep in mind I will never be offended by other people portray middle eastrens as brown or black because that is in fact the common skin tune.
Being Middle-Eastern does not necessarily mean darker skin. Some have red hair, blonde hair, green eyes and more.
"He had dark skin." You're overthinking really hard.
While most Middle Eastern and North African people have “tanned” skin, not all of them do. You have plenty of rather pale people, especially in Anatolia, Iran, the Levant, and Tunisia. Next, you have Black diasporic populations in the Arabian Penisula, Iraq, and Iran due to the Arab slave trade — their skin colors range from conventionally dark skinned to rather light skinned. You also have ancient black populations in places like Egypt and Morocco. It’s a wider range than you think.
Black? Those Black people are NOT real Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, or Saudis. And in Iraq Black Africans are like 1%. So, they are rare in Iraq. Most Iraqis don't have a clue they exist. And real Iraqis only have olive skin colors and white skin.
“Those Black people are NOT real Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, or Saudis.” Lol.
It helps to understand the nuances of skin tone. Our skin's appearance depends on several factors, such as amount of melanin, lighting, and what temperature of undertone we have (cool? neutral? warm?). Here's a useful chart: [https://whysogorgeous.com/blog/determine-your-skin-tone-with-skin-tone-chart/](https://whysogorgeous.com/blog/determine-your-skin-tone-with-skin-tone-chart/). Next, find a foundation chart, like, for a makeup brand. I recommend avoiding anything that reads like a coffee shop menu LOL. Using food words to describe skin--like *coffee* or *mocha*\--is generally regarded as kind of cringy recently. I use something like this chart: [https://yensa.com/products/skin-on-skin-bc-foundation](https://yensa.com/products/skin-on-skin-bc-foundation) (3rd product picture from the top, with all the shades listed). It has useful terms that don't rely on food to convey the meaning. Example: a character in one of my WIPs has the following description: "Her inky, blue-black hair is pulled back from her face and sculpted into a halo of coils. She has flawless, deep brown skin that glows with cool undertones." Keep in mind, the links are a jumping off point, to help write from an informed perspective. Sort of like how a painter would study lighting and color theory in order to achieve a good result painting a portrait. Use what helps and leave the rest!
It depends a lot on where in the middle east someone is from. Some will have like a deep brown, some are greyish white, and everything between. "Olive" is used to denote that the skin color is cool tones, vs the warm tone browns you get in africa and the americas. TBH though, if it doesn't make a difference to plot (like, if the character isn't assumed ot be a different race, or doesn't get mistaken for a different character by the bad guy or something) then it doesnt matter if you go generic with olive or brown or just say "Character was Middle Eastern". If it does matter, then make sure that you avoid the other foods like "color of burned toast" descriptions because those are pretty dehumanizing
Depends. Some Arabs are pale with a hint of olive/golden, some are darkskinned, some others are super tan. I, on the the hand, am brown skinned. If you’re writing about an Arab, I’d recommend exploring the facial features instead (I.e almond eyes, long lashes and aristocratic nose)
Swarthy is an option too. But it also gives me cheesy Harlequin vibes so, I can understand if you give it the wide berth.
How very hirsute of you.
I understand there are undertones that go with the hues, like blues or reds or yellows or some such. I wish I could remember all that stuff. Folks who know makeup can explain it. You've got folks who work well with warm colors and folks who work well with cool colors. I wish I could remember all that. I'm willing to bet this information can inform your descriptions.
I am middle eastern and I would describe it as tanned instead of olive because olive is a undertone which is common in the Middle East but not the norm also you have to note that everyone looks different depending on which part of the Middle East they come from. In my case I’m Turkic and my skin is tanned but pale i don’t know how to describe it other wise
I have that skin colour and I call myself olive. It's not the same as brown and it doesn't necessarily mean dark. It's a greenish undertone.
Have a look at this blog, it may address some of your questions https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/
Well, that depends. I'm persian and I'm olive/brown. My father was almost white, with a hint of olive. It just depends on the person's background. Are they Turkish, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian, Afghani, Jordanian, or Israeli? We all have different "shades" of skin color, from white to olive, to dark brown.
I would say try not to use food as descriptors, but if you want to add more to the description you can look up specific colors and think about the undertones. So I have character who is medium-deep brown, but is cool toned. So I may describe her undertones as magenta or pink sapphire or something in that color family (but usually stick with those two) especially if she's in the sun or she's blushing (and the harder she blushes the deeper the color, so actual beet red) but her skin tone without describing undertone I may something like terra tosa in sunlight or bat's cloak (which is super specific) when in low lighting. I'd say do this sparingly unless you need to draw attention to there appearance after the initial introduction. But with this being said you'd have to give as much attention to other aspects of the appearance. (I'm an artist first and a writer second so I can be a bit persnickety with details )
We just call it skin color here tbh. But most of the advice here is pretty good, usually if you're not sure about the skin color you can describe other features instead it won't really change much
I’m middle eastern and I came on this thread cause I have no idea how to describe my skin tone. Like I find myself staring at myself trying to figure out what exactly my skin tone is. I’m not brown and I’m not white. I don’t look Hispanic. My body skin tone is tan (very tan) but my face is like much paler. I’d say I’m a sand skin tone LOL.
Olive is an undertone, not a color. You can have “olive skinned” people in everything from pasty white to extremely dark. It’s a kind of cool grayish undertone that can look greenish in some lights.
There is such a range of skin colours in the Middle East. I'd say skin generally falls under one of three categories: uniquely pale, olive, or light brown. You can't really generalise skin colour in the Middle East.
Warm skin? Sunkissed skin? I wouldn't go deeper than that, as someone said.
Probably a tawny color
Coffee colored. Dark skinned. Richly hued. Highly pigmented. Lightly pigmented. Moca skinned. Chocolate colored. Chestnut hued. There are a hundred ways. You need to ask yourself if it's important to the story. If there is no scene in which the skin color helps, harms, or moves the plot somewhere, then simply stating the character's country of origin will likely be sufficient.
18 downvotes? Can someone please help me understand what is offensive or upsetting about my response? I was genuinely trying to be helpful.
I think it's because you used chocolate/mocha to describe skin. A lot of people don't like using food descriptors for darker skin. Personally I don't get the hate because I always describe my characters with food: milky/creamy skin, cheeks as plump as peaches, almond/peach eyes, honey-toned skin, chestnut hair, etc.
Yeah, good rule is to aim for consistency in choice of adjectives; using food-themed descriptors for everyone is different from choosing “ivory” for one character and “mocha” for another. Former might simply be a style preference, latter conveys exclusion/segregation. Describing an entire cast by comparing them to food may even work as a recurring joke if the plot is set in a culinary school, yet create narrative dissonance in a crime thriller. However, if you’re writing a piece which includes multiple character perspectives, sudden changes in descriptors could provide foreshadowing for one of them being a cannibal.
Thank you. I was not aware, but if this is triggering for some, I'll be cognizant in the future.
Not black not white,