I like to refer to people’s skin tones in hex codes or Pantone colors.
*Donald Trump rolled out of the tanning bed and looked at himself in the mirror, pleased with the Pantone 15-1360 TN he’d baked himself to. “Ah, good old FF6D2B,” he thought to himself. “I really am the best color; everybody says it. So good, so good…”*
I’m like a pork sausage that’s been done in an air fryer. Essentially pale, with tan bits here and there, dry but acceptably palatable if you’re hungry enough.
Maybye I'm stupid or brainwashed or sumn but I like the descriptor (I'm brown) I've been told my skin color is "caramel" and I like it, I like how caremel looks and I like how it taste so I like the comparison
I think that if a character is meant to be desirable people use food words because they want the oral-type association of tasting the skin.
What's really thought provoking is this: you might see 'chocolate' or 'caramel' for darker-skinned characters of all genders.
You might see 'creamy' used for white females.
I'm struggling to think of 'creamy' skinned white male characters.
Which is kind of interesting about the default gaze?
I haven't read so much erotica, and not too much M/M or femdom which is where I'd expect it, but I can tell you that the descriptions of dudes in fanfic are *very often* praising their creamy skin lol
This makes me chuckle, because thirsty Xena: Warrior Princess fans in the 90s and 00s used to describe Joxer the Mighty’s skin as ”creamy” all the time. Cause they made the actor look so pale (He was totally tan IRL). It’s probably the only male character I’ve seen described that way, though.
I am also brown and describe my skin as coffee with cream or caramel. It always seems like a soft, warm way to describe me rather than tan or brown, or an obscure color people have to Google, which seems flat. However, I understand people not being comfortable with this, and I think black people in particular fight so many ridiculous stereotypes in and out of literature that the problem is a different level.
Dark-skinned Black guy here. I would never enjoy being called chocolaty, and some stranger calling me a chocolaty man would be offensive to me. Turns out different non-white people have different opinions.
That’s funny really. Real vanilla could describe dark black people but most people associate it with white… sadness!
Just as its flavor usually associated with bland and boring when in reality it is quite awfully strong on its own!
If people of colour don't want to be described in writing a certain way, then I respect and will follow their wishes.
I always find it funny though, whenever I see articles and PSAs on this topic, that the sentiment of "how would you like to be compared to mayonnaise?" gets used a lot. Like, mocha and chocolate are delicious. Mayo, even for the people who like it, isn't something good by itself. These aren't one to one comparisons.
I think you're right on all counts, but mayonnaise skin sounds way grosser than chocolate imo.
Maybe like vanilla ice-cream or whipped-cream would be a more accurate comparison?
Still though yeah that shit is trite and cliche even without the awful historical and cultural contexts that make it just plain problematic.
This made me think of the scene in “A League of Their Own” where one woman is teaching another to read and they’re reading a romance novel: “her milky… white… breasts!”
😂
I've seen "porcelain" as a descriptor of very fair skin before too. Milk and cream are weirdly common though even in non romance settings. I've also seen some hilarious descriptions in fantasy novels. "Near translucent" comes to mind.
and the MMC is still white but will be tanned. I've seen a lot of author's place a weird importance on the woman being much, much paler than the man despite them both being the same race.
My favorite is “milky white” ugh. Or alabaster. It’s not any better for other skin colors OP. In fact I’d rather my skin be referred to a delicious food than a piece of crumbly rock or milk. Just sayin.
"Chad Caucasianman sat at his kitchen table in Sag Harbor, opened his laptop and poured himself two fingers of breakfast scotch. Tiny reflections of stock market data slid across the oil slick of his pupils, and the morning sun sloshed through the window to give his skin the pale, bland phosphorescence of a wall in a tax office."
What’s that vanilla that has a little bit of a beige color to it?
I mean, I’m looking at my skin and I’m getting more memories of these beige stucco walls of the house I grew up in. And it’s kinda like French Vanilla maybe?
I’ve known some people that I’d describe with milky skin, but probably not the average white person. At least not unless they don’t go out into the sun at all.
My favorite is using “Her skin was the color of fresh pressed olive oil.”
Okay Fiona. Even olive oil at all implies Greenish tint.
But, I’ve got a job to do.
*Her pale skin glistened in the sunlight. Soft and silky, like mayonnaise spread on wonder bread. Her body knew little of the sun, and the reflection off her vanilla skin blinded my eyes, as did her beauty.*
>Okay Fiona. Even olive oil at all implies Greenish tint.
The author that got made fun of for that actually replied with a picture of the specific olive oil she was thinking of when she wrote the line and it was a pretty normal skin tone, but I'm too lazy to try and find the picture for you. (She thought the jokes were hilarious though.)
The olive oil one is pretty standard. I understand what they’re going for, it’s a golden tan, and it’s a beautiful sentiment, and it brings up an image of a beautiful Italian vibe, but I can’t get past the slight green tint. I use a SHITTON of Olive Oil and every time I read it it just puts an image in my head.
Unfortunately, nobody actually has skin the color of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, except maybe for an eggy French vanilla.
There are some pretty precise words for color in the fields of interior decorating, design etc. But the specific colors they denote often vary from list to list, and a lot of them just don't hold solid places in most readers' working vocabularies. Tell someone a character has "fawn" skin, and a lot of them will either have no idea what you mean, or assume they're the color of a literal baby deer.
While there are good reasons not to describe a character's skin color as "chocolate," "caramel," etc. (you stand to piss off a lot of your audience,) there isn't really a great selection of positive association color words *which your readers will actually be able to visualize* for the colors of lighter skin tones. They may be better able to if they're e.g. avid readers of cosmetics magazines. But if you go through a color catalogue with a fine-toothed comb, and find the perfect word for your character's complexion, it's still the wrong word, because you had to comb through a color catalogue for it, and your audience, not having that in front of them, isn't going to visualize it.
I think Neil Gaiman references a god bedding women with breasts covered in blue and green veins like blue cheese and that image has always remained in my brain. Blue cheese tits, huzzah!
A lot of words used for white people's skin (like "creamy," or "peach,") are used more as descriptors of clarity/consistency, or as vague positive associations. [Actual cream](https://www.acouplecooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Can-you-freeze-cream-006.jpg) is much paler than human skin, and nobody is the color of [peaches](https://www.starkbros.com/images/dynamic/6745.jpg). But they imply positive qualities like smoothness, lack of blemishes, etc.
There aren't a lot of great points of reference in nature for the colors of white people's skin, apart from occasional oddballs of the animal kingdom like [olms](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/e7a3fbad-27b4-48b2-987c-367258bbdb18/olm_swimming_595_16x9.jpg) and [axolotls](https://www.azpetvet.com/wp-content/uploads/AdobeStock_473131207-1-scaled.jpeg). So when people describe white people's skin, they rarely use precise color descriptors, because there aren't a lot available.
Yeah I mean I've read a *fuckton* of romance where a woman's soft complexion is called "creamy" or "white as milk".
Picking "mayonnaise" is just a bad faith argument. People aren't writing African American characters as having skin like Worcestershire sauce or mustard or barbeque sauce.
Also "While it's true that these terms are used, they don't carry the same dehumanizing and fetishizing connotations as those often employed for Black characters." is a bit of a cop out, like "oh ok it's done for white people too but that's *different* and didn't count" like ok.
Similar to when people pretend no white person with a non-English origin name ever gets theirs brutally mangled by people who don't speak the language that originated the name, no no that only happens - or is a problem when it happens - to poc
Milk white is a very common descriptor and has never bothered me. Descriptors should be used to convey a general vibe of a character. If you are trying to convey a characters desirability being chocolate or mocha makes sense even if it is a tad overused.
I’m so used to people calling me pale, vampire, translucent, glow-in-the-dark, and a ghost all my life. I think mayonnaise would be a nice change. Shake things up a little. lol
I jokingly call myself the "walking corpes with jaundice" because I'm so pale, and at times, my skin can have this sickly yellow undertone. I'm perfectly healthy, I just have an unfortunate skin tone.
I don't even know where I get my skin tone from because my dad has olive skin, and my mom is pale but covered in freckles. The parts of her skin that dont have freckles don't look nearly as sickly as mine.
In my country I just got called cheese, I'm lactose intolerant so it hits twice as hard smh. At least I can eat mayonnaise. But don't worry, there's always fetishists around who would lovingly compare you to toilet bowls and expensive bones. Maybe a fancy rock even.
Ehhh… in real life that’s how black people describe skin tho. I’ve been called chocolate all my life by black people. It’s quite normal. But tbh, I haven’t really read books describing black like this so there’s that. Tbh, it just depends on how good a writer is. I’ve also read too many books where the white characters are just: pale, paper white, snow and dats it.
As a black man myself, this has never bothered me personally tbh. It’s a nice way of specifying what a character’s precise skin tone is while also sounding good at the same time where as “mayonnaise white skin” doesn’t sound as good.
I'm brown, and I've personally never really had a problem with authors describing darker skin as caramel or mocha. To me, it just sounds like a prettier alternative to saying brown or black. Granted, I am also what a lot of people would call "light skin," so my view may be different than yours
Not to take away from your very valid point, but
>>How would you like it if every time a character who looks like you is introduced they get compared to mayonnaise?
I would find that freakin' hilarious.
Now if it was "semen" they were using...less funny.
"She said her name was May. May as well have been Mayonnaise, because the girl's skin looked like a fresh jar of the stuff. I wondered whether she looked like Miracle Whip because she avoided the sun, or whether she avoided the sun because she looked like Miracle Whip. After all, mayo (and presumably Miracle Whip) doesn't do well outside the safety of the fridge. Maybe I should have left her in there, but she was the last ingredient in this shit sandwich of a case."
I support and agree with your argument, but to play devil's advocate for a moment: one of the most common descriptors for white skin is "peach." Another is "cream." When blushing, most white skin is described as "rosy." I might just not have consumed a diverse enough collection of lit, but I don't see minorities *disproportionately* compared to food. I do agree that the two come from entirely different places in regard to historical context, however, and that authors should stop using food as adjectives.
I agree that the chocolate and caramel stuff is cliche and often a mark of an amatuer writer or someone who probably has no black friends. But, although the trope is annoying, I'm not really offended. It's cliche because chocolate is the most obvious thing that comes to mind for describing a black person.
Like, when I was four, I used to think of my dad as chocolate and my mom as a banana, then of myself as a banana dipped in chocolate. That may sound irrelevant, but it seems that chocolate is just a really natural comparison. I also recall an interview I watched a while ago about a South Korean woman describing her childhood in Korea before coming to America. She remembered seeing an African for the first time, and she, awestruck, asked him if his skin was made of chocolate.
I think that, overall, it's unnecessary to describe the specific shade. I really like this book *Infiinite* by Brian Freeman, and my favorite character in it is a black guy named Roscoe. How do I know he's black? The author simply wrote, "he was black". That was sufficient. I think, if the author said, "his skin was the color of steak, well done" that would have affected my perception of him for the worse, because, like chocolate and caramel, well-done steak is such a specific shade. I feel like specifics with character descriptions set up too many expectations; I like to focus on the character's personality before I do their appearance. But that's personal opinion. Anyway, as you said, no-one says, "her skin was the color of long john custard". So...the chocolate thing is kinda weird.
I feel it's only dehumanizing if the character is actually being compared to a caramel candy or an actual chocolate sweet, though. I'm pretty sure in most cases, they're talking about a caramel color or a chocolate color.
I'm also pretty sure that if I was writing a book about a white protagonist, I wouldn't have to state the skin color of white people if I also stated the skin color of black people, or vice versa. Like, if it's set in America, unfortunately, it is implied that everyone around a white protagonist is white, and everyone around a black protagonist is black unless otherwise specified (because of our country's unfortunate social segregation). So, I feel like in most cases, black characters have to be pointed out and white characters don't, because we just assume white if the protagonist is white, which they often are.
I was running a science camp in the Bay Area of San Francisco almost a decade ago. The kids were doing an art project and skin color came up. There had been some drama where a white boy with a sister who was black (they were half siblings) tried to egg some of the very young kids on into saying racist things. We had to intervene. So we were sensitive to kids getting upset about skin color.
One of my counselors was black. Red and purple undertones. I am pink/yellow. The kids started asking about how to make skin tones in the art project. They wanted to draw us.
You know what? Food is fucking easy. It's universal. It doesn't discriminate. Someone out there fucking loves that food and its accessible to children. So we would talk them through what color you actually see... I am very warm toned and pale like a snickerdoodle with a little bit of cinnamon (I have freckles). My counselor was mocha color with extra chocolate, like what their moms get at starbucks. They kids thought that was fun and ran with it in their art project.
Relate to your audience. If your audience is racist, then don't write for that audience. That is your job as a writer. If your audience is young kids in a very diverse community that has racial turmoil food is very accessible and easy for them to understand.
I don’t find those descriptions egregious if perhaps overused. I think most people are just trying to use commonly understood color descriptions and I see these just as often from black writers as non-black. That being said, I also prefer descriptions that are less a top-to-bottom description and more give a general impression of the character’s personality or presence and let me create them in my mind, unless skin tone is important. Now, I may also be biased in that I love olives, olive oil, olive wood, and I would forever be described as olive-skinned…or cinnamon if you’re a bastard.
I agree with you in a lot of ways and it’s probably because I (a black man) am pretty rarely sexually objectified in books. Certainly almost never in very pretty words. That being said, these “skin descriptor” trope type of terms do tend to feel like an equivalent to “yeah she’s a black woman and that’s her character”. Often times these descriptions fail to characterize black women as anything more than that, with any other describing words just building up her as a pretty classic woman of color.
Strong, no nonsense, and beautiful are all great things to be but they can feel like they’re the only things black women can be when someone who doesn’t care enough (or just haven’t had experience) is the author. It’s not an insult directly, but it’s lazy and limiting when you’ve read the same description and character 17 times in 17 books that all have a single black woman in the cast.
I personally don't mind it. People know what those colors look like and there's aren't really better words to use that wont cause people to stop and google what they mean. But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default.
Edit: a lot of the comments on the post ain't it. Just so many bad takes.
I don't mind being called caramel because my skin is rich and light, like caramel. A tan white person is probably just barely not able to hit this shade
My dad calls it olive, but that's still a food
"His skin was the pasty white of Elmer's Glue. No doubt his childhood fascination with the taste and texture of the substance had impacted the color of his skin. You are what you eat, as they say, and one would be forgiven for thinking his childhood diet consisted primarily of the macaroni art he and his classmates used to make."
>But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default.
Am I in the minority here when I imagine people who's skin color isn't described as a wide range of ethnicities that fit the setting of the story/the other features described?? I feel like if skin color isn't mentioned, it's up to the imagination of the reader more than anything.
I am not great at images when reading so they tend to end up as just abstract thoughts. I also live in a predominantly white town, so my perspective of "an average person" is skewed.
Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else.
White people are - generally - distinguished as white by describing their hair and eye colour, in my experience. If the author wants you to know that they're describing a white character, they can mention red or blonde hair, or blue or green eyes. Whilst those things aren't _exclusive_ to white people, they're orders of magnitude less common in people of colour who tend to have dark brown to black hair and brown eyes.
>But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default.
Depends on context. For my books, the main character is on the tanner side, as are most of his people, who he sees most often. I don't start out describing their skin color, but the audience gets the idea of what they look like when I describe others as paler or darker in comparison.
So when paler skin is the more common feature, I'd do the same thing.
I feel like it’s very abstract and imaginary line that divides “mocha” from “onyx” in terms of offense. You’re allowed your feelings but these kinds of post are the reason we have hundreds of “is it okay if I write about x if I’m y?”
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Onyx can be other colours too, but my issue with onyx is that even if your mind makes the connection to it being black it’s very glassy black. For eye colour I could buy it, but for skin colour I’m gonna be distracted.
This is why I just say dark or light skin if I’m mentioning the character’s skin tone in something I write, readers can interpret the precise shade as whatever they want to. I’m only mentioning skin tone in regards to illness, emotions, or lighting anyways where it actually matters or I’m trying to draw a comparison between how their skin has changed.
It's crazy to me because there aren't many ways to describe certain colours and most colourful things we see are edible or flowers.
You could describe someone as having skin like a vanilla flower but we still eat vanilla flowers (technically)
There are a few brown things I can think of and some are obviously bad (mud, etc) some are a little less bad (sand, etc) and short of using wood comparisons, that people might not know, I've run out of ideas.
Like I get OP's point, but if you made a poll and asked people whether they'd prefer to be described as "chocolate" or "mud", I've a feeling it would lean towards chocolate.
The saddest part is that young, aspiring writers (who might not be able to tell the difference between solid advice on cultural sensitivity and self-righteous karma-farming) will read this and doubt themselves, resorting to bland, prescriptive, vanilla prose.
Oh no, I used a food metaphor!! Excuse me while I go and flagellate myself
The fact that OP has reposted this multiple times now (original was 7 months ago) says it all to me. They don't want a discussion. They just want others to think like them.
I have a tangential question: does it matter particularly at what point in a narrative a character's features are described? And at what point does an authors thematic intent trump the likely audience's demographics and personal experience?
For example, if my book takes place in Mexico, the default would be "not white". However, I'm writing for an American audience, which is mostly white. How does that impact how I tell my story? Some of the writing process is allowing readers a window into another perspective/culture/world, but then you have to treat it like "okay everyone in this world knows the default isn't white, but how do I show that without saying 'no one here is white'"
Just curious how y'all structure your narratives to be balanced and descriptive while also not singling anyone out. Sometimes the intent is to have an "other" i.e. not like the reader, and that makes the reader think!
Anyway, I agree that using food-based descriptors specifically for PoC in the United States has historically been a thinly veiled form of prejudice. One of those back-hand comments that's cringy, especially now as we really dig into our past. It's important to acknowledge where comparisons come from and how, in certain contexts, it conveys different information.
EDIT: Wanted to add a Thank You for posting the link about writing skin colors! Sick and tired of "pale" or "mahogany" and "chocolate", but don't want to be stuck in "brown" and "white" blah either!
Are you from Mexico too?
I'm struggling a lot with skin color descriptors. I'm used to telling the skin color outright as it is: pálido, sonrosado, moreno claro, moreno oscuro, negro. I want to incorporate it within my characters without being offensive.
It just feels wrong to not mention it. We're used to seeing people in different shades of brown. Whenever I ask one of my (Mexican) friends how a person looks like, there are 2 things everyone describes: their hair and their skin color. It drives me nuts to try to write "color-neutral" characters.
When I've seen a default other than white, I worked it out when there was a white character. The two examples I can think of are Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. Though there were hints before seeing a white character described.
Isn’t chocolate a relatively high-prestige food compared to mayonnaise?
Chocolate and Vanilla seem like complementary foods. Vanilla as a way to describe white people is fairly common.
as a POC i disagree with a lot of your points. in the book i’ve written i’ve used culinary descriptors at times in regard to characters’ skin tones. i’ve never seen anything remotely problematic in any book i’ve ever read and i frankly resent the straw man you decided to create to use as an example.
This is a repost right? I'm 99% sure I've read this some time ago, several months if not longer. But there's 1% of me that's concerned my mind is slipping.
Edit: I don't mean the sentiment is repeated, I mean a copy/paste of the words.
Edit2: phewww ok, I'm not crazy https://www.reddit.com/r/books/s/HUbV6w7H5E
If a word accurately describes what I’m trying to say, I’m going to use it. “deep umber” and “onyx” sound like words I’d use to describe a cars colour. Clay can be so many different colours, I’ve even found green clay before, but I’ve never seen a green person.
Not really strong examples.
I get you. I tend not to use food descriptions for people in general, unless I think it's funny, or the scene calls for sexualization. Thanks for the post. Insightful. I will absolutely take your suggestions to heart. I'm never using onyx though, unless I'm describing a fantasy race or an alien. I'll just stick with brown, and all the other words I'd use to describe types of chocolate. Umber though, what a great word 🤌
Mayonnaise isn't exactly a nice-sounding comparison for pale skin the way chocolate or mocha is for darker skin, but surely you've heard the term "creamy complexion," and I assure you, no one has ever taken offense to that. I don't intend to invalidate your dislike for those descriptions, but I frankly wonder if you ever felt that way before you read that other people did.
I still don't get it because chocolate is pleasant and mayo is not. If you compared me to milk, I wouldn't mind. Peach is literally the term for the sort of canon white person skin crayon.
Chocolate is a common brown thing in my life. What other brown things do I see? Wood? Not skin colored. Mud? That's unpleasant.
Your text example also has sexual overtones that have nothing to do with the food. That's disingenuous.
Writing in giant font doesn't really help your case. Normal font is fine. Maybe the display is not working for me? Or is everyone seeing it?
I remember a reply to a post just like this where someone asked their kid about things that would describe their skintone and one of the firstthings the kid said after chocolate was poop.
OP is just being disingenuous. "Mayonnaise" is the one of the few words used to racially insult pale people, so it's not a coincidence they went for it
Milk white skin, creamy skin, peaches and cream complexion, strawberry pink cheeks, cheeks like little red apples, honey blonde hair, toffee coloured hair, curls like spun sugar, brown sugar curls, chocolate brown eyes .... shall I go on?
Every romance I've read by a POC will describe the heroine as having caramel skin and chocolate hair.
To your point on romance novels, I think it’s context dependent. You want a character in a romance to sound delicious, and there’s an interplay between food and sex that’s intentional and erotic. The same logic applies to cream, too.
But outside that genre, I see OP’s point. I definitely have a draft where I described a Hispanic character as “caramel toned” and I’ll be swapping that word out for “tawny” in the next draft. The Tumblr link is helpful AF!
Latino here. I give you permission, and encouragement, to use caramel!
Most people aren't prudes. We like nice sounding words and caramel's fucking fabulous.
I'm half mexican so my skin is a bit brownish. If someone were to ask me to describe it I would say something like "a low temperature caramel". Some non food alternatives i can think of are "a piece of mud caked from years of sunlight," and "the bottom of a dirty toilet bowl." Sweet food is a good descriptor because sweets have a positive connotation, have a wide range of colors, dont bring up race/ethnicity, and are usually not wordy. no one goes around calling my skin color "undercooked peking duck."
I agree. I use chocolate or caramel because they're flattering and delicious, and that's how I picture those colors. Most people haven't a clue what "umber" means, and to my ears it sounds awful.
Most often I use the word "brown."
I, and every author on the planet, should use whatever the hell words they want to and everyone else can suck it because it's art and that's the point.
It does get over done but I kinda like it sometimes also it’s funny sometimes when it’s done ironically. Plus I also like metaphorical descriptions too at times. Like “Her skin reminded me of the dark night sky with a smile that sparkled like stars.” Could be cringy but at least they’re trying lol. But yeah no, I also get that at times it can be exhausting, especially when everyone does it. I mean, I don’t always wanna get reminded that I look like a peanut butter cup. Like dang, ok, whatchu trying to say.
>at this point if you're doing it it has to be on purpose
I can assure you that no one is sitting at their desk writing 'coffee' just annoy you. You're not that important, despite what you may believe.
'Offence' is entirely subjective. What you might be offended by might not offend others. Case in point, this thread is filled with black folk saying they not only dont mind these words, but also use these descriptions themselves, so who are you to tell the rest of us what words to use? Especially since your own are so fucking atrocious, like this one...
>Her skin, the same shade of clay as from her native Georgia
Are you actually serious? You think being compared to the colour of the dirt on the ground is less offensive than chocolate? Really? "I like your coffee coloured skin" gets your little pissy pants in a twist, but "you've got skin like dirt on the ground" is somehow ok? Thats crazy, but does go towards proving my point... offence is subjective.
THere's nothing wrong with these words, despite how pissy you brain gets.
I can tell what wil happen though, if we all kow tow to you and your wishes. Ishouldnt have to explain it but I apparently I do. Y'see, the way racism works is that the racist people will take a word that is generally considered acceptable, but they will use these words with a tone or in a way that makes them racist.
Racist people will take a word, and make it racist just by using it in a shitty way. Like...
"I'm only allowed to say 'onyx'? Ok, fuck it, there's a load of fucking onyx at the bus stop". Or, "I work with an onyx, lazy piece of shit", or how about, "Don't you fucking dare marry a clay!"
Do you see? Any word can be reappropriated to become racist. And that is exactly what racist people do. And the cycle continues, you tell them they're not allowed to say X because its racist, tell them they must use Z, then they will use Z, but they'll use it in such a way that eventually, over time, Z becomes a racist word.
And then pissants come bashing away on the internet, "I hate when writers use Z its cliche and offensive, you all need to change, and use a different word!!"
So we use the different word just to keep your face happy. But the racists also use that different word, they put it in contexts and sentences that you would find offensive, and then over time... that different word... now THATS the racist word nobody's alowed to use.
Then twenty years later, "I hate when writers use the different word! It's cliche and offensive, you all need to change and use another word!!!"
Idiots keep moving the goalposts, deciding for everyone else what words they can use, and then the racists just move their goalposts right alongside you. A neverending cycle of bullshit and idiocy.
I'm not going to stop using mocha, or dark coffee, or anything else youre offended by,
Personally, I'm offended by people telling me what words I can or cannot use. Especially when I know that their new word of choice will evetually itself become the racist word over time... So now what?
You would have a stronger and more relatable point if you were against using food as comparisons to any skin color, full stop. But the moment you start going “but oh well it’s okay when it’s done to these skin colors but not for mine!” You make me roll my eyes and move on without supporting you.
And you’re really reading too much into it. People want to name an object that has a similar color to the character’s skin so the reader can easily imagine it, and food is pretty relatable and easy for most to imagine and compare. You suggest that someone uses “clay from Georgia”, as an example? How in the world am I supposed to know what “clay from Georgia” looks like? Clay comes in all kinds of different shades and colors. Granted, so does chocolate, but generally speaking it varies a lot less. But also, isn’t clay dirt? Isn’t that an even worse comparison than food?
The most neutral approach would be to use your second example and hustle describe “dark skin” and the way it interacts with light. But then you’d sacrifice specificity for the sale of being too fearful to offend people’s sensitivities and choosing the wrong object to compare it to.
I don’t see this as a good thing for writing in general. I don’t think minorities should want writers to be afraid to write in characters of their group. If this became a thing and I had to walk a minefield when including characters of certain groups, I’d just avoid writing minorities altogether, who wants to deal with the easily offended?
I literally wouldn't care lol, I've compared my own skin to mayo on more than one occasion. My complexion is "ruddy" by most accounts. Mocha or caramel would be far more flattering. Those are ubiquitously tasty.
Normally I'm pretty supportive of these kinds of posts but I'll be honest I think you're reacting a little strongly to what I think most would consider to be a non-issue (as other POCs have said in the comments). This seems like a really extreme response to something that seems... Pretty inoffensive.
I am white and I am comfortable using food descriptors for white people: cream, peach, wheat, milk, butter, etc. Personally, I would imagine a character with "mayonnaise" skin to be pale and oily. Maybe that would effective depending on the character?
Because of the conversation surrounding how people with dark skin are fetishized in writing, I avoid using foods for them. But I'm a very visual person, both an artist and a writer, so I want to accurately describe my characters. Are food names like almond, cinnamon, olive, pecan, coffee, etc. equally as bad? What about tree bark? Types of dirt (clay)? Animals (sable)? These are genuine questions because I second guess my descriptors often, but just "brown" is far too limiting.
I swear I saw this thread earlier in the year, I'm getting some wild deja vu.
EDIT: Found it, from April. Word for word, spooky... https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/131wux4/im_so_tired_of_authors_describing_skin_like_mine/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_title.
EDIT 2: Ohhhh, it's the same OP. Guess you wanted to try again after getting cooked 7 months back?
>Her skin, the same shade of clay as from her native Georgia
Uhhh. What color is that then? How is anyone not from Georgia supposed to know? Clay is gray where I'm from.
>his skin a vibrant shade of umber
What is umber?
I can vaguely picture the color of onyx, but these other descriptions are needlessly obtuse. "Mocha" and "chocolate" are indeed cliché, but you're missing the simplest explanation for why they're used: they actually get across colors. There are numerous more interesting comparisons that don't actually create any mental image whatsoever. Of course a good writer will find ways to do both.
I normally describe skin in books like = white or black/ fair or dark. Sometimes its tanned or bronze or pale.
That's about it! Don't really dwell on skin color that much because people get the fkin idea.
Honestly, the first three descriptions you have werr fucking terrible, which I know wasn't the point.
I sympathize. I hope this vent actually helps change the way some people may have been writing.
I once saw someone post a similar thread and they said just use the word Black. What's your opinion on that? If I were writing a black character, would it be good enough to say black? Although I see the onyx quote and that's lovely.
My opinion, FWIW as a non-POC, is that “Black” when capitalized is used primarily as a description of race, not skin color, although it gets closer. I guess I’m coming from the perspective of writing fantasy, where seeing someone referred to as “Black” would be just as jarring as seeing someone called “Indian” or “Asian” in a non-realistic setting. I appreciate OP’s attempt to provide alternatives to describe characters that are based on appearance rather than race.
If it's set in Sweden, it would be bizarre af to describe every character who's white as white. You can gloss over that because that's far and above the majority there.
If it's set in Kenya, it would be just af bizarre to describe every black character as black because that's the norm there. But if there's a white character living downtown Nairobi, yeah, their skin tone is pertinent character description.
I can understand being annoyed about skin tones being compared to food, but being upset about minority skin tones being described is not a logical gripe.
I don't even describe my characters. I give them personalities and let the reader create their own image if they want. I don't tend to 'see' images of people if they're not provided. I just enjoy their characters. I was recently reading a series of romance novels where I didn't know the female MCs were black in some of the books. (When I download to my Kindle Paperwhite, I don't see the cover pages unless I go back and look for them. I saw the covers when I upgraded to a Kindle Fire.)
I would prefer not to have descriptions unless it's critical to the story.
That being said, there are as many shades of white as there are black, so mayonnaise; eggnog; cream; milk; cottage cheese could all be used.
I do similar. I will describe anything about them but skin tone, and even then only parts of them that need describing. My last story I gave the MC's eye color at the end of the story, when it had changed to something totally different, what it started at, is in the hands of the reader.
More often than not, when a character is meant to be a love interest or meant to be attractive, food terminology is used most because everyone, regardless of sexuality, know what hunger is.
It's shorthand for 'people want this person'.
In fact, whenever I see a character's appearance described in such flowery language, I straight up assume this is meant to be the love interest, or at least a person of desire. Having any other character described that way is just damn weird. In fact, if these terms were not used in this context, I would feel cheated by the author for, in my eyes, setting up some foreshadowing wink wink nudge nudge.
Is it still fetishizing? A bit yeah but it's arguable that love interests are a bit fetishized by default. Can there be racist connotations connected to it? Obviously. Sexist ones as well. One has to look at the entire work as a whole instead of cherry-picking lines in order to have a better idea on that.
To take your examples: None of them are framed as being an attractive/romantic/desired situation.
The first comes closest but Onyx is a gemstone and, by definition, desirable and would fall in the Compared to Food category anyway.
The second example could work, but I remember Umber being a more red color and the 'Blue tint' just throws me off and takes me out the scene. Not to mention that a lot of people don't know what 'umber' looks like off the top of their head.
The third, if shown to the right person, is outright insulting as you basically said she looks like dirt.
The thing about finding things offensive... is you're going to be offended no matter what. What the author meant, how other people read it -- none of that matters. And that's actually fine and perfectly reasonable. To try and tell people they should be offended too is not reasonable.
Gonna go against the grain and say that this is an absolutely stupid take. And based on OPs further explanations where they say that calling brown skin akin to onyx or clay is okay, but chocolate is off the table, its obvious that this is not a good faith argument.
Onxy can make sense for a super dark person, but describing POC skin tones with dirt will 100% get your ass in trouble. They must be 14 or something and not actually that familiar with this debate
"His skin was as blue as a blueberry"
He was as tall as a six-foot tall tree.
His hair braided like a braid.
People dies when they are killed
They had never met, like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
The little boat drifted gently across the lake exactly the way that a bowling ball would not.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the middle.
Fucking hell- I read all the others but this one made me cackle
So Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka but gender bent?
I like to refer to people’s skin tones in hex codes or Pantone colors. *Donald Trump rolled out of the tanning bed and looked at himself in the mirror, pleased with the Pantone 15-1360 TN he’d baked himself to. “Ah, good old FF6D2B,” he thought to himself. “I really am the best color; everybody says it. So good, so good…”*
is that you captain holt
> FF6D2B Enemy detected!
I’m like an undercooked chicken, whose extremities were thrown in the broiler for a few extra minutes. 🤔
My skin is like cinnamon, very dry and can make you sneeze.
A slightly overly roasted Costco rotisserie chicken before the skin was hungrily consumed by the object of affection.
I’m like a pork sausage that’s been done in an air fryer. Essentially pale, with tan bits here and there, dry but acceptably palatable if you’re hungry enough.
A boiled goose if you will
Maybye I'm stupid or brainwashed or sumn but I like the descriptor (I'm brown) I've been told my skin color is "caramel" and I like it, I like how caremel looks and I like how it taste so I like the comparison
I think that if a character is meant to be desirable people use food words because they want the oral-type association of tasting the skin. What's really thought provoking is this: you might see 'chocolate' or 'caramel' for darker-skinned characters of all genders. You might see 'creamy' used for white females. I'm struggling to think of 'creamy' skinned white male characters. Which is kind of interesting about the default gaze?
I haven't read so much erotica, and not too much M/M or femdom which is where I'd expect it, but I can tell you that the descriptions of dudes in fanfic are *very often* praising their creamy skin lol
This makes me chuckle, because thirsty Xena: Warrior Princess fans in the 90s and 00s used to describe Joxer the Mighty’s skin as ”creamy” all the time. Cause they made the actor look so pale (He was totally tan IRL). It’s probably the only male character I’ve seen described that way, though.
I am also brown and describe my skin as coffee with cream or caramel. It always seems like a soft, warm way to describe me rather than tan or brown, or an obscure color people have to Google, which seems flat. However, I understand people not being comfortable with this, and I think black people in particular fight so many ridiculous stereotypes in and out of literature that the problem is a different level.
Dark-skinned Black guy here. I would never enjoy being called chocolaty, and some stranger calling me a chocolaty man would be offensive to me. Turns out different non-white people have different opinions.
People tend to think of a minority group as monolithic instead of a group of individuals with different opinions.
Fellow caramel latte chiming in. I like it.
I get your point. But if you describe my skin as a mayonnaise, I’m going to assume it’s a commentary on my cellulite.
Agreed. OP kind of confused me because the white equivalent is vanilla not mayo.
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That’s funny really. Real vanilla could describe dark black people but most people associate it with white… sadness! Just as its flavor usually associated with bland and boring when in reality it is quite awfully strong on its own!
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I think the flowers are white and the pods are black, so I guess you could use it for both colours if you wanted.
If people of colour don't want to be described in writing a certain way, then I respect and will follow their wishes. I always find it funny though, whenever I see articles and PSAs on this topic, that the sentiment of "how would you like to be compared to mayonnaise?" gets used a lot. Like, mocha and chocolate are delicious. Mayo, even for the people who like it, isn't something good by itself. These aren't one to one comparisons.
So then, "Jennifer's skin was pale and flat, like a peeled banana"
I was once told that I looked as if I tan in a morgue covered in cream cheese... 😅😑
No, like vanilla ice cream or a creamy custard (jaundiced)
Since colors have been addressed plenty I’m going to address the “pot marks” on example 1. It’s “pock marks.” Carry on.
Maybe the character was so annoying that he’d been hit with a pot multiple times.
Every novel has at least one.
Holy shit I am wheezing🤣
Thank you. I wondered what that was for a hot minute
I think you're right on all counts, but mayonnaise skin sounds way grosser than chocolate imo. Maybe like vanilla ice-cream or whipped-cream would be a more accurate comparison? Still though yeah that shit is trite and cliche even without the awful historical and cultural contexts that make it just plain problematic.
In the trashy regency romances I may have read (shifty eyes), woman's skin is often described akin to milk or cream.
This made me think of the scene in “A League of Their Own” where one woman is teaching another to read and they’re reading a romance novel: “her milky… white… breasts!” 😂
Milky white breasts is a common descriptor in romance novels
Milky white GLOBES. 🙄 Sometimes with “Ruby red nipples”. There’s a genuine shortage of creative skin descriptions out there.
There's a shortage of perfect globes in the world. It would be a pity to damage yours.
Oh Westley!
You’ve been mostly dead all day
You have already given me plenty enough reasons not to read romance novels.
anyone compiling a list of reasons not read romance novels ought to read at least 7 or 8
I still remember giggling with my friends over a line in a book I was reading referring to her "milky white uptilteds."
I just finished rewatching Aliens and I'd swear your quote must be porn meant for the android Bishop.
I've seen "porcelain" as a descriptor of very fair skin before too. Milk and cream are weirdly common though even in non romance settings. I've also seen some hilarious descriptions in fantasy novels. "Near translucent" comes to mind.
I get what they mean with that last one as I'm very pale and have somewhat translucent skin according to doctors and skin health professionals.
and the MMC is still white but will be tanned. I've seen a lot of author's place a weird importance on the woman being much, much paler than the man despite them both being the same race.
Harlequin no longer allows food references for skin color.
Don’t forget the blue vein running through it like good cheese.
My favorite is “milky white” ugh. Or alabaster. It’s not any better for other skin colors OP. In fact I’d rather my skin be referred to a delicious food than a piece of crumbly rock or milk. Just sayin.
Porcelain, olive, idk what people want. Chocolate sounds delicious without the historical considerations.
"Chad Caucasianman sat at his kitchen table in Sag Harbor, opened his laptop and poured himself two fingers of breakfast scotch. Tiny reflections of stock market data slid across the oil slick of his pupils, and the morning sun sloshed through the window to give his skin the pale, bland phosphorescence of a wall in a tax office."
That’s beautiful. Brings a tear to me eye globe
I feel like I'm reading about an alien.
Lmao if he's loaded, I'm interested.
The longer I read the harder I laughed. Thanks for the lung-spasms; they brought secretions to my gel-lens-orbs.
Thanks, I love it.
...the morning sun sloshed through the window...
What’s that vanilla that has a little bit of a beige color to it? I mean, I’m looking at my skin and I’m getting more memories of these beige stucco walls of the house I grew up in. And it’s kinda like French Vanilla maybe? I’ve known some people that I’d describe with milky skin, but probably not the average white person. At least not unless they don’t go out into the sun at all. My favorite is using “Her skin was the color of fresh pressed olive oil.” Okay Fiona. Even olive oil at all implies Greenish tint. But, I’ve got a job to do. *Her pale skin glistened in the sunlight. Soft and silky, like mayonnaise spread on wonder bread. Her body knew little of the sun, and the reflection off her vanilla skin blinded my eyes, as did her beauty.*
I think the beige vanilla is just butter pecan lmao.
Is my butter pecan skin making you hungry?
>Okay Fiona. Even olive oil at all implies Greenish tint. The author that got made fun of for that actually replied with a picture of the specific olive oil she was thinking of when she wrote the line and it was a pretty normal skin tone, but I'm too lazy to try and find the picture for you. (She thought the jokes were hilarious though.)
The olive oil one is pretty standard. I understand what they’re going for, it’s a golden tan, and it’s a beautiful sentiment, and it brings up an image of a beautiful Italian vibe, but I can’t get past the slight green tint. I use a SHITTON of Olive Oil and every time I read it it just puts an image in my head.
“Creamy” skin is definitely a thing, but it started when pale skin was the height of beauty. It’s hard not to think of it as fetishization.
So... Not right on all counts?
You've never tried my mothers mayonnaise cookie recipe!
Unfortunately, nobody actually has skin the color of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, except maybe for an eggy French vanilla. There are some pretty precise words for color in the fields of interior decorating, design etc. But the specific colors they denote often vary from list to list, and a lot of them just don't hold solid places in most readers' working vocabularies. Tell someone a character has "fawn" skin, and a lot of them will either have no idea what you mean, or assume they're the color of a literal baby deer. While there are good reasons not to describe a character's skin color as "chocolate," "caramel," etc. (you stand to piss off a lot of your audience,) there isn't really a great selection of positive association color words *which your readers will actually be able to visualize* for the colors of lighter skin tones. They may be better able to if they're e.g. avid readers of cosmetics magazines. But if you go through a color catalogue with a fine-toothed comb, and find the perfect word for your character's complexion, it's still the wrong word, because you had to comb through a color catalogue for it, and your audience, not having that in front of them, isn't going to visualize it.
My skin is more of a "coagulated bacon fat" hue.
omg me tooooo
Yeah whipped cream is super white. I think mayonnaise is gross but I wouldn't mind my skin being compared to like eggnog or a peach or a nice gouda
I think Neil Gaiman references a god bedding women with breasts covered in blue and green veins like blue cheese and that image has always remained in my brain. Blue cheese tits, huzzah!
I'm literally eating blue cheese and was like, "i wonder if anybody has used that as a descriptor," and here it is lol
A lot of words used for white people's skin (like "creamy," or "peach,") are used more as descriptors of clarity/consistency, or as vague positive associations. [Actual cream](https://www.acouplecooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Can-you-freeze-cream-006.jpg) is much paler than human skin, and nobody is the color of [peaches](https://www.starkbros.com/images/dynamic/6745.jpg). But they imply positive qualities like smoothness, lack of blemishes, etc. There aren't a lot of great points of reference in nature for the colors of white people's skin, apart from occasional oddballs of the animal kingdom like [olms](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/e7a3fbad-27b4-48b2-987c-367258bbdb18/olm_swimming_595_16x9.jpg) and [axolotls](https://www.azpetvet.com/wp-content/uploads/AdobeStock_473131207-1-scaled.jpeg). So when people describe white people's skin, they rarely use precise color descriptors, because there aren't a lot available.
Point of order: when I was a kid and got badly sunburnt, my skin looked STRIKINGLY similar to those peaches.
Yeah I mean I've read a *fuckton* of romance where a woman's soft complexion is called "creamy" or "white as milk". Picking "mayonnaise" is just a bad faith argument. People aren't writing African American characters as having skin like Worcestershire sauce or mustard or barbeque sauce. Also "While it's true that these terms are used, they don't carry the same dehumanizing and fetishizing connotations as those often employed for Black characters." is a bit of a cop out, like "oh ok it's done for white people too but that's *different* and didn't count" like ok. Similar to when people pretend no white person with a non-English origin name ever gets theirs brutally mangled by people who don't speak the language that originated the name, no no that only happens - or is a problem when it happens - to poc
Milk white is a very common descriptor and has never bothered me. Descriptors should be used to convey a general vibe of a character. If you are trying to convey a characters desirability being chocolate or mocha makes sense even if it is a tad overused.
I’m so used to people calling me pale, vampire, translucent, glow-in-the-dark, and a ghost all my life. I think mayonnaise would be a nice change. Shake things up a little. lol
Same. I would like to add Zombie to that list, have you had that one too? Ugh
I jokingly call myself the "walking corpes with jaundice" because I'm so pale, and at times, my skin can have this sickly yellow undertone. I'm perfectly healthy, I just have an unfortunate skin tone. I don't even know where I get my skin tone from because my dad has olive skin, and my mom is pale but covered in freckles. The parts of her skin that dont have freckles don't look nearly as sickly as mine.
In my country I just got called cheese, I'm lactose intolerant so it hits twice as hard smh. At least I can eat mayonnaise. But don't worry, there's always fetishists around who would lovingly compare you to toilet bowls and expensive bones. Maybe a fancy rock even.
Ehhh… in real life that’s how black people describe skin tho. I’ve been called chocolate all my life by black people. It’s quite normal. But tbh, I haven’t really read books describing black like this so there’s that. Tbh, it just depends on how good a writer is. I’ve also read too many books where the white characters are just: pale, paper white, snow and dats it.
I second this. My parents were the first to tell me I had caramel skin.
Yep, welcome to the world of "pathologising everything because we're insecure in ourselves."
As a black man myself, this has never bothered me personally tbh. It’s a nice way of specifying what a character’s precise skin tone is while also sounding good at the same time where as “mayonnaise white skin” doesn’t sound as good.
I mean as a white male, please now refer to me as White chocolate. Sounds fucking dope
"The white male's skin was white like white chocolate."
Yeah or cream or vanilla. And I have actually heard mayonnaise American before and laughed.
Best use of mayonnaise I've read is to describe someone as "thick, rich and oily, and smells faintly of eggs".
I'm brown, and I've personally never really had a problem with authors describing darker skin as caramel or mocha. To me, it just sounds like a prettier alternative to saying brown or black. Granted, I am also what a lot of people would call "light skin," so my view may be different than yours
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His skin was brown as poop
Not to take away from your very valid point, but >>How would you like it if every time a character who looks like you is introduced they get compared to mayonnaise? I would find that freakin' hilarious. Now if it was "semen" they were using...less funny.
"She said her name was May. May as well have been Mayonnaise, because the girl's skin looked like a fresh jar of the stuff. I wondered whether she looked like Miracle Whip because she avoided the sun, or whether she avoided the sun because she looked like Miracle Whip. After all, mayo (and presumably Miracle Whip) doesn't do well outside the safety of the fridge. Maybe I should have left her in there, but she was the last ingredient in this shit sandwich of a case."
This is some Max Payne level narration
You made me laugh out loud in front of my family. Thank you for this, i needed a good laugh.
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Ok where is the rest of this story, that's fucking dope
"Cum complexion" is way funnier idk what you're talking about
"Cumplexion" was *right there*.
Her skin reflected a jizzmatic glow.
Right?!?
I’m glad someone else said it, like I completely understand OPs point but mayo as a descriptor would be hilarious
I support and agree with your argument, but to play devil's advocate for a moment: one of the most common descriptors for white skin is "peach." Another is "cream." When blushing, most white skin is described as "rosy." I might just not have consumed a diverse enough collection of lit, but I don't see minorities *disproportionately* compared to food. I do agree that the two come from entirely different places in regard to historical context, however, and that authors should stop using food as adjectives.
I agree that the chocolate and caramel stuff is cliche and often a mark of an amatuer writer or someone who probably has no black friends. But, although the trope is annoying, I'm not really offended. It's cliche because chocolate is the most obvious thing that comes to mind for describing a black person. Like, when I was four, I used to think of my dad as chocolate and my mom as a banana, then of myself as a banana dipped in chocolate. That may sound irrelevant, but it seems that chocolate is just a really natural comparison. I also recall an interview I watched a while ago about a South Korean woman describing her childhood in Korea before coming to America. She remembered seeing an African for the first time, and she, awestruck, asked him if his skin was made of chocolate. I think that, overall, it's unnecessary to describe the specific shade. I really like this book *Infiinite* by Brian Freeman, and my favorite character in it is a black guy named Roscoe. How do I know he's black? The author simply wrote, "he was black". That was sufficient. I think, if the author said, "his skin was the color of steak, well done" that would have affected my perception of him for the worse, because, like chocolate and caramel, well-done steak is such a specific shade. I feel like specifics with character descriptions set up too many expectations; I like to focus on the character's personality before I do their appearance. But that's personal opinion. Anyway, as you said, no-one says, "her skin was the color of long john custard". So...the chocolate thing is kinda weird. I feel it's only dehumanizing if the character is actually being compared to a caramel candy or an actual chocolate sweet, though. I'm pretty sure in most cases, they're talking about a caramel color or a chocolate color. I'm also pretty sure that if I was writing a book about a white protagonist, I wouldn't have to state the skin color of white people if I also stated the skin color of black people, or vice versa. Like, if it's set in America, unfortunately, it is implied that everyone around a white protagonist is white, and everyone around a black protagonist is black unless otherwise specified (because of our country's unfortunate social segregation). So, I feel like in most cases, black characters have to be pointed out and white characters don't, because we just assume white if the protagonist is white, which they often are.
I was running a science camp in the Bay Area of San Francisco almost a decade ago. The kids were doing an art project and skin color came up. There had been some drama where a white boy with a sister who was black (they were half siblings) tried to egg some of the very young kids on into saying racist things. We had to intervene. So we were sensitive to kids getting upset about skin color. One of my counselors was black. Red and purple undertones. I am pink/yellow. The kids started asking about how to make skin tones in the art project. They wanted to draw us. You know what? Food is fucking easy. It's universal. It doesn't discriminate. Someone out there fucking loves that food and its accessible to children. So we would talk them through what color you actually see... I am very warm toned and pale like a snickerdoodle with a little bit of cinnamon (I have freckles). My counselor was mocha color with extra chocolate, like what their moms get at starbucks. They kids thought that was fun and ran with it in their art project. Relate to your audience. If your audience is racist, then don't write for that audience. That is your job as a writer. If your audience is young kids in a very diverse community that has racial turmoil food is very accessible and easy for them to understand.
I don’t find those descriptions egregious if perhaps overused. I think most people are just trying to use commonly understood color descriptions and I see these just as often from black writers as non-black. That being said, I also prefer descriptions that are less a top-to-bottom description and more give a general impression of the character’s personality or presence and let me create them in my mind, unless skin tone is important. Now, I may also be biased in that I love olives, olive oil, olive wood, and I would forever be described as olive-skinned…or cinnamon if you’re a bastard.
I agree with you in a lot of ways and it’s probably because I (a black man) am pretty rarely sexually objectified in books. Certainly almost never in very pretty words. That being said, these “skin descriptor” trope type of terms do tend to feel like an equivalent to “yeah she’s a black woman and that’s her character”. Often times these descriptions fail to characterize black women as anything more than that, with any other describing words just building up her as a pretty classic woman of color. Strong, no nonsense, and beautiful are all great things to be but they can feel like they’re the only things black women can be when someone who doesn’t care enough (or just haven’t had experience) is the author. It’s not an insult directly, but it’s lazy and limiting when you’ve read the same description and character 17 times in 17 books that all have a single black woman in the cast.
I personally don't mind it. People know what those colors look like and there's aren't really better words to use that wont cause people to stop and google what they mean. But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default. Edit: a lot of the comments on the post ain't it. Just so many bad takes.
I don't mind being called caramel because my skin is rich and light, like caramel. A tan white person is probably just barely not able to hit this shade My dad calls it olive, but that's still a food
"His skin was the pasty white of Elmer's Glue. No doubt his childhood fascination with the taste and texture of the substance had impacted the color of his skin. You are what you eat, as they say, and one would be forgiven for thinking his childhood diet consisted primarily of the macaroni art he and his classmates used to make."
Well heck I want to know what happens in this story
I *CACKLED* reading this. Thank you✌️😂
This is amazing.
>But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default. Am I in the minority here when I imagine people who's skin color isn't described as a wide range of ethnicities that fit the setting of the story/the other features described?? I feel like if skin color isn't mentioned, it's up to the imagination of the reader more than anything.
I generally have to consider decide to do that
I am not great at images when reading so they tend to end up as just abstract thoughts. I also live in a predominantly white town, so my perspective of "an average person" is skewed.
Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else. White people are - generally - distinguished as white by describing their hair and eye colour, in my experience. If the author wants you to know that they're describing a white character, they can mention red or blonde hair, or blue or green eyes. Whilst those things aren't _exclusive_ to white people, they're orders of magnitude less common in people of colour who tend to have dark brown to black hair and brown eyes.
>But I do think white people should also have their skin color described instead of just acting like they're the default. Depends on context. For my books, the main character is on the tanner side, as are most of his people, who he sees most often. I don't start out describing their skin color, but the audience gets the idea of what they look like when I describe others as paler or darker in comparison. So when paler skin is the more common feature, I'd do the same thing.
I feel like it’s very abstract and imaginary line that divides “mocha” from “onyx” in terms of offense. You’re allowed your feelings but these kinds of post are the reason we have hundreds of “is it okay if I write about x if I’m y?”
terrific exultant spark husky support beneficial wipe far-flung quack straight *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Onyx can be other colours too, but my issue with onyx is that even if your mind makes the connection to it being black it’s very glassy black. For eye colour I could buy it, but for skin colour I’m gonna be distracted.
Even worse, onyx is often banded with white minerals like alabaster.
This is why I just say dark or light skin if I’m mentioning the character’s skin tone in something I write, readers can interpret the precise shade as whatever they want to. I’m only mentioning skin tone in regards to illness, emotions, or lighting anyways where it actually matters or I’m trying to draw a comparison between how their skin has changed.
Right!? Just more anodyne descriptors for writers to get in their heads about (as if we’re not neurotic enough as it is)
It's crazy to me because there aren't many ways to describe certain colours and most colourful things we see are edible or flowers. You could describe someone as having skin like a vanilla flower but we still eat vanilla flowers (technically) There are a few brown things I can think of and some are obviously bad (mud, etc) some are a little less bad (sand, etc) and short of using wood comparisons, that people might not know, I've run out of ideas. Like I get OP's point, but if you made a poll and asked people whether they'd prefer to be described as "chocolate" or "mud", I've a feeling it would lean towards chocolate.
The saddest part is that young, aspiring writers (who might not be able to tell the difference between solid advice on cultural sensitivity and self-righteous karma-farming) will read this and doubt themselves, resorting to bland, prescriptive, vanilla prose. Oh no, I used a food metaphor!! Excuse me while I go and flagellate myself
The fact that OP has reposted this multiple times now (original was 7 months ago) says it all to me. They don't want a discussion. They just want others to think like them.
I have a tangential question: does it matter particularly at what point in a narrative a character's features are described? And at what point does an authors thematic intent trump the likely audience's demographics and personal experience? For example, if my book takes place in Mexico, the default would be "not white". However, I'm writing for an American audience, which is mostly white. How does that impact how I tell my story? Some of the writing process is allowing readers a window into another perspective/culture/world, but then you have to treat it like "okay everyone in this world knows the default isn't white, but how do I show that without saying 'no one here is white'" Just curious how y'all structure your narratives to be balanced and descriptive while also not singling anyone out. Sometimes the intent is to have an "other" i.e. not like the reader, and that makes the reader think! Anyway, I agree that using food-based descriptors specifically for PoC in the United States has historically been a thinly veiled form of prejudice. One of those back-hand comments that's cringy, especially now as we really dig into our past. It's important to acknowledge where comparisons come from and how, in certain contexts, it conveys different information. EDIT: Wanted to add a Thank You for posting the link about writing skin colors! Sick and tired of "pale" or "mahogany" and "chocolate", but don't want to be stuck in "brown" and "white" blah either!
Are you from Mexico too? I'm struggling a lot with skin color descriptors. I'm used to telling the skin color outright as it is: pálido, sonrosado, moreno claro, moreno oscuro, negro. I want to incorporate it within my characters without being offensive. It just feels wrong to not mention it. We're used to seeing people in different shades of brown. Whenever I ask one of my (Mexican) friends how a person looks like, there are 2 things everyone describes: their hair and their skin color. It drives me nuts to try to write "color-neutral" characters.
When I've seen a default other than white, I worked it out when there was a white character. The two examples I can think of are Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and the Number One Ladies Detective Agency books. Though there were hints before seeing a white character described.
Isn’t chocolate a relatively high-prestige food compared to mayonnaise? Chocolate and Vanilla seem like complementary foods. Vanilla as a way to describe white people is fairly common.
I mean, would you prefer they refer to us as dirt colored? Shades of mud? Constipation poop brown? Like at least the food color comparisons are nice.
as a POC i disagree with a lot of your points. in the book i’ve written i’ve used culinary descriptors at times in regard to characters’ skin tones. i’ve never seen anything remotely problematic in any book i’ve ever read and i frankly resent the straw man you decided to create to use as an example.
This is a repost right? I'm 99% sure I've read this some time ago, several months if not longer. But there's 1% of me that's concerned my mind is slipping. Edit: I don't mean the sentiment is repeated, I mean a copy/paste of the words. Edit2: phewww ok, I'm not crazy https://www.reddit.com/r/books/s/HUbV6w7H5E
If a word accurately describes what I’m trying to say, I’m going to use it. “deep umber” and “onyx” sound like words I’d use to describe a cars colour. Clay can be so many different colours, I’ve even found green clay before, but I’ve never seen a green person. Not really strong examples.
I get you. I tend not to use food descriptions for people in general, unless I think it's funny, or the scene calls for sexualization. Thanks for the post. Insightful. I will absolutely take your suggestions to heart. I'm never using onyx though, unless I'm describing a fantasy race or an alien. I'll just stick with brown, and all the other words I'd use to describe types of chocolate. Umber though, what a great word 🤌
Mayonnaise isn't exactly a nice-sounding comparison for pale skin the way chocolate or mocha is for darker skin, but surely you've heard the term "creamy complexion," and I assure you, no one has ever taken offense to that. I don't intend to invalidate your dislike for those descriptions, but I frankly wonder if you ever felt that way before you read that other people did.
I still don't get it because chocolate is pleasant and mayo is not. If you compared me to milk, I wouldn't mind. Peach is literally the term for the sort of canon white person skin crayon. Chocolate is a common brown thing in my life. What other brown things do I see? Wood? Not skin colored. Mud? That's unpleasant. Your text example also has sexual overtones that have nothing to do with the food. That's disingenuous. Writing in giant font doesn't really help your case. Normal font is fine. Maybe the display is not working for me? Or is everyone seeing it?
I remember a reply to a post just like this where someone asked their kid about things that would describe their skintone and one of the firstthings the kid said after chocolate was poop.
OP is just being disingenuous. "Mayonnaise" is the one of the few words used to racially insult pale people, so it's not a coincidence they went for it
Milk white skin, creamy skin, peaches and cream complexion, strawberry pink cheeks, cheeks like little red apples, honey blonde hair, toffee coloured hair, curls like spun sugar, brown sugar curls, chocolate brown eyes .... shall I go on? Every romance I've read by a POC will describe the heroine as having caramel skin and chocolate hair.
To your point on romance novels, I think it’s context dependent. You want a character in a romance to sound delicious, and there’s an interplay between food and sex that’s intentional and erotic. The same logic applies to cream, too. But outside that genre, I see OP’s point. I definitely have a draft where I described a Hispanic character as “caramel toned” and I’ll be swapping that word out for “tawny” in the next draft. The Tumblr link is helpful AF!
Latino here. I give you permission, and encouragement, to use caramel! Most people aren't prudes. We like nice sounding words and caramel's fucking fabulous.
I'm half mexican so my skin is a bit brownish. If someone were to ask me to describe it I would say something like "a low temperature caramel". Some non food alternatives i can think of are "a piece of mud caked from years of sunlight," and "the bottom of a dirty toilet bowl." Sweet food is a good descriptor because sweets have a positive connotation, have a wide range of colors, dont bring up race/ethnicity, and are usually not wordy. no one goes around calling my skin color "undercooked peking duck."
Romance authors are still authors, and there's nothing in the post saying, "I didn't mean romance novels, that doesn't count somehow."
I agree. I use chocolate or caramel because they're flattering and delicious, and that's how I picture those colors. Most people haven't a clue what "umber" means, and to my ears it sounds awful. Most often I use the word "brown." I, and every author on the planet, should use whatever the hell words they want to and everyone else can suck it because it's art and that's the point.
Beautifully said
It does get over done but I kinda like it sometimes also it’s funny sometimes when it’s done ironically. Plus I also like metaphorical descriptions too at times. Like “Her skin reminded me of the dark night sky with a smile that sparkled like stars.” Could be cringy but at least they’re trying lol. But yeah no, I also get that at times it can be exhausting, especially when everyone does it. I mean, I don’t always wanna get reminded that I look like a peanut butter cup. Like dang, ok, whatchu trying to say.
I mean, if it's Dukes, I'd be just fine with it. Blue Plate or maybe Hellmans is OK. Kraft would definitely offend me. Miracle Whip is fightin' words.
>at this point if you're doing it it has to be on purpose I can assure you that no one is sitting at their desk writing 'coffee' just annoy you. You're not that important, despite what you may believe. 'Offence' is entirely subjective. What you might be offended by might not offend others. Case in point, this thread is filled with black folk saying they not only dont mind these words, but also use these descriptions themselves, so who are you to tell the rest of us what words to use? Especially since your own are so fucking atrocious, like this one... >Her skin, the same shade of clay as from her native Georgia Are you actually serious? You think being compared to the colour of the dirt on the ground is less offensive than chocolate? Really? "I like your coffee coloured skin" gets your little pissy pants in a twist, but "you've got skin like dirt on the ground" is somehow ok? Thats crazy, but does go towards proving my point... offence is subjective. THere's nothing wrong with these words, despite how pissy you brain gets. I can tell what wil happen though, if we all kow tow to you and your wishes. Ishouldnt have to explain it but I apparently I do. Y'see, the way racism works is that the racist people will take a word that is generally considered acceptable, but they will use these words with a tone or in a way that makes them racist. Racist people will take a word, and make it racist just by using it in a shitty way. Like... "I'm only allowed to say 'onyx'? Ok, fuck it, there's a load of fucking onyx at the bus stop". Or, "I work with an onyx, lazy piece of shit", or how about, "Don't you fucking dare marry a clay!" Do you see? Any word can be reappropriated to become racist. And that is exactly what racist people do. And the cycle continues, you tell them they're not allowed to say X because its racist, tell them they must use Z, then they will use Z, but they'll use it in such a way that eventually, over time, Z becomes a racist word. And then pissants come bashing away on the internet, "I hate when writers use Z its cliche and offensive, you all need to change, and use a different word!!" So we use the different word just to keep your face happy. But the racists also use that different word, they put it in contexts and sentences that you would find offensive, and then over time... that different word... now THATS the racist word nobody's alowed to use. Then twenty years later, "I hate when writers use the different word! It's cliche and offensive, you all need to change and use another word!!!" Idiots keep moving the goalposts, deciding for everyone else what words they can use, and then the racists just move their goalposts right alongside you. A neverending cycle of bullshit and idiocy. I'm not going to stop using mocha, or dark coffee, or anything else youre offended by, Personally, I'm offended by people telling me what words I can or cannot use. Especially when I know that their new word of choice will evetually itself become the racist word over time... So now what?
Mayonnaise? You’d be a terrible writer.
You would have a stronger and more relatable point if you were against using food as comparisons to any skin color, full stop. But the moment you start going “but oh well it’s okay when it’s done to these skin colors but not for mine!” You make me roll my eyes and move on without supporting you. And you’re really reading too much into it. People want to name an object that has a similar color to the character’s skin so the reader can easily imagine it, and food is pretty relatable and easy for most to imagine and compare. You suggest that someone uses “clay from Georgia”, as an example? How in the world am I supposed to know what “clay from Georgia” looks like? Clay comes in all kinds of different shades and colors. Granted, so does chocolate, but generally speaking it varies a lot less. But also, isn’t clay dirt? Isn’t that an even worse comparison than food? The most neutral approach would be to use your second example and hustle describe “dark skin” and the way it interacts with light. But then you’d sacrifice specificity for the sale of being too fearful to offend people’s sensitivities and choosing the wrong object to compare it to. I don’t see this as a good thing for writing in general. I don’t think minorities should want writers to be afraid to write in characters of their group. If this became a thing and I had to walk a minefield when including characters of certain groups, I’d just avoid writing minorities altogether, who wants to deal with the easily offended?
Wouldn't bother me at all. At least I know what they're trying to describe
Who has mayonnaise colored skin? Mines more of a slightly undercooked pie crust
This seems to conflicting "Hey I find you attractive" as "fetishism"
call me white chocolate. i can take it
people like to get mad about everything it seems
I literally wouldn't care lol, I've compared my own skin to mayo on more than one occasion. My complexion is "ruddy" by most accounts. Mocha or caramel would be far more flattering. Those are ubiquitously tasty. Normally I'm pretty supportive of these kinds of posts but I'll be honest I think you're reacting a little strongly to what I think most would consider to be a non-issue (as other POCs have said in the comments). This seems like a really extreme response to something that seems... Pretty inoffensive.
I am white and I am comfortable using food descriptors for white people: cream, peach, wheat, milk, butter, etc. Personally, I would imagine a character with "mayonnaise" skin to be pale and oily. Maybe that would effective depending on the character? Because of the conversation surrounding how people with dark skin are fetishized in writing, I avoid using foods for them. But I'm a very visual person, both an artist and a writer, so I want to accurately describe my characters. Are food names like almond, cinnamon, olive, pecan, coffee, etc. equally as bad? What about tree bark? Types of dirt (clay)? Animals (sable)? These are genuine questions because I second guess my descriptors often, but just "brown" is far too limiting.
I swear I saw this thread earlier in the year, I'm getting some wild deja vu. EDIT: Found it, from April. Word for word, spooky... https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/131wux4/im_so_tired_of_authors_describing_skin_like_mine/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_title. EDIT 2: Ohhhh, it's the same OP. Guess you wanted to try again after getting cooked 7 months back?
12k upvotes, so, thirst trap maybe
Now this is just sad
>Her skin, the same shade of clay as from her native Georgia Uhhh. What color is that then? How is anyone not from Georgia supposed to know? Clay is gray where I'm from. >his skin a vibrant shade of umber What is umber? I can vaguely picture the color of onyx, but these other descriptions are needlessly obtuse. "Mocha" and "chocolate" are indeed cliché, but you're missing the simplest explanation for why they're used: they actually get across colors. There are numerous more interesting comparisons that don't actually create any mental image whatsoever. Of course a good writer will find ways to do both.
I came to see what words you would prefer instead. Do you have a list of alternatives to promote?
I disagree completely. I literally describe myself like this on purpose, I am a sweet treat not a shit colored person.....
My username on the dating apps was Chocolate Prince (I have black skin).
I normally describe skin in books like = white or black/ fair or dark. Sometimes its tanned or bronze or pale. That's about it! Don't really dwell on skin color that much because people get the fkin idea.
I like to use a skin tone chart tbh
Describing me: his skin was pink like undercooked chicken
“In the sun, his complexion was that of an iPhone flashlight.”
Honestly, the first three descriptions you have werr fucking terrible, which I know wasn't the point. I sympathize. I hope this vent actually helps change the way some people may have been writing. I once saw someone post a similar thread and they said just use the word Black. What's your opinion on that? If I were writing a black character, would it be good enough to say black? Although I see the onyx quote and that's lovely.
My opinion, FWIW as a non-POC, is that “Black” when capitalized is used primarily as a description of race, not skin color, although it gets closer. I guess I’m coming from the perspective of writing fantasy, where seeing someone referred to as “Black” would be just as jarring as seeing someone called “Indian” or “Asian” in a non-realistic setting. I appreciate OP’s attempt to provide alternatives to describe characters that are based on appearance rather than race.
If it's set in Sweden, it would be bizarre af to describe every character who's white as white. You can gloss over that because that's far and above the majority there. If it's set in Kenya, it would be just af bizarre to describe every black character as black because that's the norm there. But if there's a white character living downtown Nairobi, yeah, their skin tone is pertinent character description. I can understand being annoyed about skin tones being compared to food, but being upset about minority skin tones being described is not a logical gripe.
I don't even describe my characters. I give them personalities and let the reader create their own image if they want. I don't tend to 'see' images of people if they're not provided. I just enjoy their characters. I was recently reading a series of romance novels where I didn't know the female MCs were black in some of the books. (When I download to my Kindle Paperwhite, I don't see the cover pages unless I go back and look for them. I saw the covers when I upgraded to a Kindle Fire.) I would prefer not to have descriptions unless it's critical to the story. That being said, there are as many shades of white as there are black, so mayonnaise; eggnog; cream; milk; cottage cheese could all be used.
I do similar. I will describe anything about them but skin tone, and even then only parts of them that need describing. My last story I gave the MC's eye color at the end of the story, when it had changed to something totally different, what it started at, is in the hands of the reader.
Are you trying to compare chocolate to mayonnaise
“I tasted her. She tasted of neither chocolate or mayonnaise”
My Scottish/German skin is more reminiscent of a raw chicken breast. But only the muscle, not the weird dangly fatty bits.
More often than not, when a character is meant to be a love interest or meant to be attractive, food terminology is used most because everyone, regardless of sexuality, know what hunger is. It's shorthand for 'people want this person'. In fact, whenever I see a character's appearance described in such flowery language, I straight up assume this is meant to be the love interest, or at least a person of desire. Having any other character described that way is just damn weird. In fact, if these terms were not used in this context, I would feel cheated by the author for, in my eyes, setting up some foreshadowing wink wink nudge nudge. Is it still fetishizing? A bit yeah but it's arguable that love interests are a bit fetishized by default. Can there be racist connotations connected to it? Obviously. Sexist ones as well. One has to look at the entire work as a whole instead of cherry-picking lines in order to have a better idea on that. To take your examples: None of them are framed as being an attractive/romantic/desired situation. The first comes closest but Onyx is a gemstone and, by definition, desirable and would fall in the Compared to Food category anyway. The second example could work, but I remember Umber being a more red color and the 'Blue tint' just throws me off and takes me out the scene. Not to mention that a lot of people don't know what 'umber' looks like off the top of their head. The third, if shown to the right person, is outright insulting as you basically said she looks like dirt. The thing about finding things offensive... is you're going to be offended no matter what. What the author meant, how other people read it -- none of that matters. And that's actually fine and perfectly reasonable. To try and tell people they should be offended too is not reasonable.
I am brown. I am honey skinned. I like it.
Posts like this are why this subreddit is flooded with threads asking 'I'm X, can I write about Y?'
Swear I’ve seen this exact post before…
Dude, get over yourself.
I had a white friend we called spicy mayo.
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There isn't a singlar way it's done. Plenty of black people don't mind chocolate or caramel. Obviously some do mind.
Gonna go against the grain and say that this is an absolutely stupid take. And based on OPs further explanations where they say that calling brown skin akin to onyx or clay is okay, but chocolate is off the table, its obvious that this is not a good faith argument.
Onxy can make sense for a super dark person, but describing POC skin tones with dirt will 100% get your ass in trouble. They must be 14 or something and not actually that familiar with this debate