Talk:Human skin color/Archives/2019/July

Modification

Currently, the only discussion here is on skin whitening and some intersectionality boilerplate.

A, we should eventually have better treatment of pre-modern preferences beyond one single academic's opinion concerning classical antiquity's color-blindness and an off-handed mention of a era-not-even-mentioned practice of the "Maassai & al." In particular, skin color not exclusively determining social status does not actually imply the Romans & al. considered Nubians or Picts their equals any more than present-day racism is exclusively restricted to melanin count; ancient and medieval America, India, and East Asia also need addressing.

B, we only discuss skin whitening in the context of racism and its presumed effects. We also need to eventually discuss other artificial modification of skin color in human history/culture generally. At the moment, Wikipedia's only treatment of the idea of skin dyeing is dealt with at skin whitening (i.e., artificial lightening), sunless tanning (i.e., artificial darkening), and blackface (i.e., racist artificial darkening). Off the top of my head, humans have doubtless darkened their skins for various reasons other than racist caricature before modern chemical bronzers (early visitors to Mecca, for example, usually felt they needed to darken their skin as part of the disguise to avoid being executed); the Lazarite missionaries to China like É.R. Huc dyed their skin yellow on Macao before hitting the mainland after the Franciscans & co. wrecked the Jesuits' missions but before the Treaty of Nanjing & al. began protecting most Europeans from most persecution; the Celts had their blue woad, presumably religious; some present-day people dye their skin red to seem demonic or green to seem reptilian; etc. — LlywelynII 05:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Woman's foot in Myanmar

What is the reason for the different color shades? Is this a medical problem? A result of prolonged work in the field? Perhaps a cosmetic preference? Etan J. Tal^(talk) 08:32, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

IANAD. Looks like vitiligo. — LlywelynII 05:15, 29 July 2019 (UTC)