A thunderstorm passing through Academichic central during baby e.’s nap time made taking an outfit picture this morning a no-go, so I’m going to fudge a little for this final day of Dress Your Best week. You can all imagine me in a gray tank, yellow cardigan, skinnies, and oxfords, right? Good.
Because guess what? Today I’m giving a gold star to my skin tone.
Skin tone can be a touchy subject for people of Asian descent. I’ve done some work on representations of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, and one of the recurring and most viscerally arresting tropes of anti-Japanese propaganda was a fixation on skin tone. In cartoons, Japanese characters were depicted with bright yellow skin. In Life Magazine’s “scientific” charting of the differences between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese people were described as having an “earthy yellow complexion.” In the US Army-issued handbook of 1942, Japanese skin is described as “lemon yellow.” See how powerfully discourse — both textual and visual — can shape perceptions of desirability or acceptability? I’ve mentioned this story of junior high woe before, but when I was in 7th grade someone told me that Asians should never wear yellow because of their already yellow skin tone. The implication was that I shouldn’t want to look any more yellow than I had to. I’m still sad that I took that directive to heart and wasted almost ten years of yellow-wearing opportunities.
See, I’ve come to love how yellow looks with my coloring. I love that it makes my skin appear a little more golden, that it contrasts with my dark hair, that it warms my brown eyes. And as such, it appears quite frequently in my wardrobe. It’s quite possible, for example, that I have worn and blogged my mustard blouson top more often than any other top I own:
And I own not one but TWO yellow cardigans, one more pastel and one more acidic in tone:
And, yes, I have perhaps found other ways to sneak yellow in there: a saffron top here, yellow pointy-toe flats there. Ooh, and look! Yellow patent sandals!
And, no, I couldn’t make it through my pregnancy without purchasing a bright yellow top and perhaps looking like the sunshine in the Jimmy Dean breakfast commercials. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing:
So here’s to you, half-Japanese skin, in all your impossible-to-match-makeup-to glory. And to you, yellow percentage of my wardrobe for always being the color pick-me-up that makes me love my biggest organ.
And that’s my five: height (torso), sterno-clavicular region, arms, cheeks, and skin tone. We’ll be reflecting more on the Dress Your Best project in some round-up posts next week, at which point we’ll be even more strapped to find adequate ways to explain how inspiring and mind-bending it has been to do this with you all. So for now, thank you.
I love the way you’ve embraced your skin tone & rocked the yellow so fabulously! I cannot get over how much I love the yellow-on-yellow tee and cardigan. Such a great mix!
Great job with the yellow. I was told the same thing as you as a kid and avoid yellow for a long time. I also like how I look in yellow, so now I wear it. =^)
I also spent years of my life thinking that I couldn’t wear yellow. It’s only been through blogging over this past year that I have gotten over my color phobia.
Yellow looks amazing on you, E!
I have a yellowish skin tone also!
You look great in yellow!!
Yellow is my favorite color and I love to see others rock it! It’s so sad when people say they “can’t” wear it.
I love yellow and it looks beautiful on you in these lovely pics! If you do want to get really well-matched, go to an Asian makeup line, like Shiseido or ShuUemura, both upstanding lovely brands with some pretty pricey but also very very good facial makeup.
As a pale-skinned redhead who loves every warm color going – red, orange, pink, and (yes!) yellow – I hear you! You look amazing in every shade of yellow you’ve chosen.
Thank you and your fellow academichics for this week. It’s been amazing to see a wonderful, beautiful bunch of women come to grips with highlighting their bodies’ strengths.
You look radiant in yellow! I’m always so scared to wear yellow because I’m pale- but you are giving me hope!!!!
Yay! You look great in yellow :D
Love this post and yesterday’s. I also have Japanese heritage and I sometimes have trouble embracing my round cheeks and skin tone when I look in the mirror (though as with many insecurities, I have no trouble seeing these things as beautiful on others!). Your last two posts are exactly what I needed to read – thank you for sharing them!
I am of half asian descent, my mother is Chinese and my father is Australian (I live in Australia) and I don’t wear yellow, because someone once told me, that it looked terrible on me. But when I see how good it looks on you, I am going to try it for myself, thankyou.
I also was told I looked “sallow” in yellow. But that was pre- “Color me beautiful.” I think there was an older idea that you had to “balance out” anything striking in your coloring. But now, I realize that yellow makes me look gold-er and healthier, so lately I’ve been wearing a lot of it. It looks great on you!
I *love* this post! I am also Asian and thought for a long time that I categorically could not wear yellow. While I’ll admit that I still do not always love the color, particularly in its more pastel incarnations, I am definitely starting to accumulate some mustards and saffrons and golds in my wardrobe.
Love this post!! I’m Asian, too, and I love wearing yellow! (I’ve never heard that I’m not supposed to wear yellow, though…I have gotten some “why did you come to school naked” jokes when I do wear it, though. ) If only makeup companies would also decide to start making more yellow-toned foundation..
yay! yellow is the best – i can’t help but be happy when i wear it!
[...] on end at Academichic Central, so today I decided to make my own sunshine and bring back out the yellow that I gushed about on my final day of Dress Your Best [...]
[...] Some days I do want to look like an hourglass. Some days I don’t. Some days I embrace looking a little yellow. Some days I want to play with unexpected proportions even if that doesn’t maximize my visual [...]
[...] that I’d wear it for just this picture. One thing that E. has taught me is that staying away from supposedly off-limits colors based on your skin tone or hair or whatever is [...]