As I set up my computer the other day, my eldest sister was looking over my shoulder, and just about fell over herself snickering snidely at the title of a file in my writing folder. It’s simply titled, “100 Shades of Brown.”
Lest you think I had visions of gray, I did not – that’s a VERY old file indeed into which I toss descriptors I read of brown skin which are not food related, negligibly clichéd or otherwise inaccurate, ridiculous, or insulting. (Random links: Why writers really should lose the phrase “almond-shaped eyes” and another writer’s shared resource list of their own descriptors.) My brown file I jokingly titled after Nick Earls’s hilarious 2004 novel, FORTY-EIGHT SHADES OF BROWN, which had nothing to do with skin tone descriptors, and everything to do with… brown. (Just read it, don’t ask.)
Yeah, we’re hipsters, Nick and me. Into shades long before it became a Thing.