Advice/Help How to describe a variety of skin tone/colors?

[nerdy tangents]

Idk, I'm usually pretty blunt, but I'm not all people.

Well as a plus sized person , it absolutely is a dick move to comment on someone’s weight to their face. It’s kind of a dick move to mention it behind their back too but it is at least fairly normalized (sadly).

But yeah just calling someone fat to their face is always just straight up mean.

 

[Jannah]

Well as a plus sized person , it absolutely is a dick move to comment on someone’s weight to their face. It’s kind of a dick move to mention it behind their back too but it is at least fairly normalized (sadly).

But yeah just calling someone fat to their face is always just straight up mean.

Well, I never said my social skills were great... I admit I struggle in that area.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Well, I never said my social skills were great... I admit I struggle in that area.

Yeah as a general rule the difference between blunt and mean is just :

Are you mentioning something a person can change? - That's blunt

Are you mentioning something a person can't change? - That's mean.

If you aren't certain of the difference (weight can be tricky for instance) then just don't mention it. You can never be too polite but you can easily be accidentally cruel.

 

[Jannah]

Yeah as a general rule the difference between blunt and mean is just :

Are you mentioning something a person can change? - That's blunt

Are you mentioning something a person can't change? - That's mean.

If you aren't certain of the difference (weight can be tricky for instance) then just don't mention it. You can never be too polite but you can easily be accidentally cruel.

Well, that's the thing. Weight can be changed unless it's the result of a chronic disease or something.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Well, that's the thing. Weight can be changed unless it's the result of a chronic disease or something.

See that's why I said it's a tricky subject. Because what society has deemed "healthy" is actually incredibly unhealthy for a vast majority of the population. I'm considered fat. But if you ask my doctor I'm actually perfectly healthy. Because my body is designed to be on the larger side. If I were to starve myself to look "healthy" by society's standards I would be deeply unhealthy by actual dietary needs.

So that's why I said it's best to air on the side of being too polite. Because a lot of what we are taught about other people is actually deeply harmful and factually incorrect. Especially as it pertains to other people's bodies, their socio-economic status, and their mental health.

So as a general rule mentioning any of the following things are at best rude if not outright hurtful.
- Weight
- Skin Color
- Job Status
- Income / Wealth / Housing Status
- Mental Health
- Physical Disabilities
- Sexuality
- Ethnicity

If a person brings any of these topics up themselves then you can comment on them. If they do not just find something else to talk about.

 

[Corrosion]

His skin was quite dark, with a tone that matched the HTML hex code of #8D5524, RGB: (141, 85, 36), and CMYK that was 0, 0.397, 0.744, 0.447.

 

[Mitheral]

Yeah as a general rule the difference between blunt and mean is just :

Are you mentioning something a person can change? - That's blunt

Are you mentioning something a person can't change? - That's mean.

If you aren't certain of the difference (weight can be tricky for instance) then just don't mention it. You can never be too polite but you can easily be accidentally cruel.

Funny you should say accidental. I did that once. Really cruel too. I was teasing my sister-in-law. She was the sort of girl we all teased about being an airhead at times. That was taken in good humor. However, her metabolism had slowed down as she entered adulthood and she started to gain weight. My wife (herself plus sized) had pointed out that she was getting .... fluffy.

Fluffy. I thought it meant being an airhead. I had absolutely no clue that is had a very different meaning. And to be honest, I hadn't noticed her gain in weight. Boy did I get chewed out and rightly so. And yes I apologized profusely.

Anyways, as to getting berated about the physical descriptions of characters, I normally use pics. But when that isn't an option, I opt for the most basic descriptions and let imagination do the rest. I avoid the problem. But of you don't want to avoid it, then the next time you get berated, ASK the other person what terms THEY would use. Give them a pic of someone with similar skin color and get them to describe it. Personally skin shades are just something I never paid much attention to. Falls into the category of unimportant as well it should.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Mitheral so I agree with most of what you said except the part where skin color is unimportant. As the OP illustrated that only works for white people.

White people can ignore their skin color because it is the automatic default.

In much the same way anyone can fit societal norms gets to ignore their appearance.

But the problem is when you ignore “unimportant” details you also erase everyone who doesn’t fit those norms. Because no one is going to default to assuming a character is plus sizes unless you directly mention it.

Any more then they will assume a character is a person of color unless you directly mention it.

Hell people go to rather illogical lengths to just go with the assumption everyone is white, cis, heterosexual, and of a socially acceptable weight.

Even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Like I have had people try to tell me their characters are native Japanese and also white European looking individuals.

Now that is technically possible but it’s by no means the default. But because the white European ideal is so built into the default of character descriptions they couldn’t imagine something different in a specific country that has its own majority ethnicity

 

[Coward]

Personally I just go with unambiguous descriptions, which is something I got from Black authors like Octavia Butler and NK Jemisin . They'll just be like 'he had deep black skin' or similar. Because the white default is so overpowering, this seems to be helpful to get the description to actually stick in people's heads.

Compare that to works like Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin where the main character is non-white but because she doesn't hammer it home a lot of readers are surprised to hear it. This guy is born in a village where everyone is described as having tan colour skin and black hair, and yet readers somehow assume the main character to be the only white person in this village.

This is not to say the readers are racist, it's just the white default in action.

 

[Jannah]

Personally I just go with unambiguous descriptions, which is something I got from Black authors like Octavia Butler and NK Jemisin . They'll just be like 'he had deep black skin' or similar. Because the white default is so overpowering, this seems to be helpful to get the description to actually stick in people's heads.

CC works like Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin where the main character is non-white but because she doesn't hammer it home like half of readers are surprised to hear it. This guy is born in a village where everyone is described as having tan colour skin and black hair, and yet readers somehow assume the main character to be the only white person in this village.

This is not to say the readers are racist, it's just the white default in action.

Hey, whatever works to get the message across. I'm all for this

 

[FloofWhispers]

As a white homosexual man, I try my best to be very careful with the terms I use for certain appearances as to not offend others. One such thing is that I try not to use racist terms, for example, I try to stay away from stereotyped phrases, as such as:

"His skin was colored as freshly melted chocolate."

This, to many people, especially African-Americans, can be viewed as "insensitive", which is the complete opposite that I want to write as, so I tend to try my best to avoid describing skin as well. Normally, when I describe these kind of characters, I describe them as such:

"The man had a tone of brown to his skin, as light as oak wood in a spring forest."

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I also write for tan characters:

"He had an air of mystique to him, not fitting for his sunset-colored skin and ebony-colored hair."​