A bin of crayons at an elementary school classroom.
The skin color crayon. Growing up in American white suburbia, it is a term I heard often as a child. I would sit in class, meticulously drawing flowers, animals, houses, and the like. When I had to draw people, I would sketch a figure, again and again, erasing and retrying until I was satisfied with the image. Once I finished my sketch and decided to begin coloring it in, I would go around asking my classmates to borrow the “skin color” crayon.
There was never any confusion about which crayon I was asking for. I’d often have to wait a few minutes since it was in high demand, but eventually I would be handed a beige crayon. By this point, the crayon would usually be nearly unusable, worn to a stub after filling in so many of my classmates’ outlines. To a young black girl like me, it seemed natural that the whole world would use this crayon to color their people. I would return to my outlines and use the crayon to bring my drawings to life.
Now, I look back on this facet of my childhood and realize how absurd it was. It is absurd that it never occurred to me to use one of the many shades of brown that sat, unused, in the bottom of the crayon bin; that it never occurred to me to draw someone who looked like me. Instead, I waited patiently for the “skin color” crayon that my white peers used. As a kid, I probably drew hundreds of characters with light skin and blonde hair, but there were no black girls to be found in my pictures.
As I grew older, I began to realize that the people I was drawing were not my people. They did not look like me, and I could not relate to them. I felt as though the people I had created did not share important parts of my identity. And as I grew more and more uneasy with the unfamiliar faces staring at me from my own drawings, I began to experiment with the chocolate brown colored crayon that more closely resembled my own skin. This rich brown color allowed me to create figures that reminded me of myself, and while I’ll admit that I am no artistic prodigy, I began to take more pride in the people I drew.
I still, though, referred to the beige crayon as the skin color crayon. And although I did not realize it, through this seemingly innocent habit I was perpetuating racial hierarchies by accepting nudity is best embodied in a beige crayon.
And this conflation of nudity and whiteness was not and is not limited to me and my elementary school classroom. When I walk into clothing stores or shop online, I find tan articles of clothing that are labeled as “nude.” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines nude as “having a color (such as pale beige or tan) that matches the wearer’s skin tones or giving the appearance of nudity.” When we use language that assumes that beige is the color of human skin, we implicitly support the false notion that beige is the color of humanity — or at least of the humans that matter.
Clothing stores’ use of the word “nude” as a synonym for beige essentially dismisses other shades of skin color, from pale pink to dark brown. Stores like Free People, Zara, and Neiman Marcus sell tan clothing items labeled as nude and make beige dresses with mesh overlays to create the illusion of visible white skin.
Interestingly, though, this behavior doesn’t seem to alienate customers with darker skin tones. Black shoppers still buy from these brands, and, like me in my elementary school days, often don’t challenge the use of nude as a synonym for beige. Throughout the beauty and fashion industry, black shoppers are forced to rely on brands which make products designed primarily for white consumers. For a long time, people of color have been pressuring the makeup industry to stop championing light pigmentation; a recent movement against this preference for whiteness has led some women of color, including Rihanna, to create their own makeup companies. Her makeup brand Fenty is among the first to explicitly address variety within black skin tones. With 40 shades, Fenty allows for the diversity of skin tone that exists among women of color. Now a year old, Fenty has proven itself as a brand that women of color are able to identify with.
It may seem innocent, but the fashion industry’s conflation of nudity and whiteness implicitly perpetuates racist assumptions and alienates black people. Companies must sell products for women of all shades and must stop using the word nude only to refer to tan clothing and makeup. This narrow perception of nudity fails to make space for the variety of skin colors that exists, from bone white to deep brown.
Image Source: Flickr/Phil Roeder