I thought light skin was desirable.
Because a lot of people want to look like carrots.
Even though it's unhealthy to let skin get burned, I don't enjoy looking at pale to crimson skins.
I don't dislike anyone for reasons of colour, but I do have an aesthetic preference for skin colours between golden, dark copper red and glowing brown. I think it might be because these colours give more three-dimensional shape to the face. They gleam with brighter highlights and deeper shadows.
I was born with typical Anglo-Celtic skin so I can burn easily. I work outdoors a lot, well covered against the Australian sun, but reflected glare still affects me. It has leathered and wrinkled my face and hands beyond my 60 years. Fortunately, I have no need for personal beauty. I worry about getting enough vit-D to prevent bone loss, so I expose all my skin for 10 minutes when the sun is pleasant but not too strong.
It is natural to tan. Burning is bad. White people are not supposed to look like the Greek statues.
Light skin IS desirable. I don't sunbathe. I did when I was younger but haven't for quite some years.
Other people have different motivations, but I need some sun exposure to keep my psoriasis in check. As a side effect of that exposure, I end up becoming somewhat tan.
:)
Hello gc:
You got it backwards. Light skin is desirable for dark skinned people, whereas, dark skin is desirable for white skinned people.. Who can make sense of it?
excon
It makes my white leisure suit and gold chain really pop.
That sounds like a question for Ilse Koch.
There is a wonderful passage in a novelization of either the original Star Trek series or the Star Trek animated series where Kirk tries to explain to Spock why it was on Earth in the 20th century that some people would lighten their skin to try to "pass" while other people would deliberately darken their skin.
Spock, of course, could not make any sense of it...;-D...
