Why Is Tanned Skin Called Olive?

[@NameExplain]

Screw pineapple on pizza, what about olives on pizza? It's a huge no from me.

[@paogene1288]

Same, for looks only.

[@sizanogreen9900]

Sorry but I'll have to respectfully disagree. On both fronts.

[@romad357]

Black olives are fine

[@davea6314]

I like both pineapple and olives on my pizza. I prefer that my pizza is gluten free after hearing the research by Dr. Rodney Ford.

[@voodoolilium]

what!? I always get olives on my pizza if possible 😂

[@LordMayorOfDairyBell]

Fun Fact: a lot of painters have found that the best way to get any skin color to look right, you have to mix in a small amount green.

[@caro31099]

ooh I’ve seen some tutorials where they paint over a green base and it does look more realistic

[@Illumisepoolist]

Since I'm a hybrid of a black and a white. I call myself a gray.

[@Jonas_Marshall]

Vitiligo?

[@yellowfuzz292]

Homestuck

[@jorgelotr3752]

If you are from the US, then you are black, given that for US standards, whiteness is a quality that's lost upon the slightest of the taints, and people with the right appearance, and even the right ancestry, are denied it for those causes (the most common are admixture so many generations back that it doesn't count and having someone somewhere in your direct family line that speaks or spoke Spanish or Portuguese natively). People who have lost their whiteness belong to whatever group added to the lineage, and in the speacific case of loss of whiteness for native language, the belong to the category of Latinos (category that, for some reason, seems to be very invasive, since it can also cause the loss of blackness and the condition of Native American too; East Asianness seems to be able to coexist with it to an extent, though).

[@alesanchez87]

I knew you were already here.

[@bensantos3882]

Mulatto maybe?

[@00Mandy00]

It does look greenish. My daughter has light skin that tans easily and it definitely has a greenish tinge. Not everyone who has tan skin has that tinge. I have pinkish-yellow skin, that used to be called "peaches and cream". Undertone in skin color does affect how people look. I agree that using "olive" to describe that particular undertone was meant to be a positive association with the fruit. I think the use has broadened beyond the specific undertone.

[@SeverusFelix]

Your daughter can photosynthesize, pretty cool

[@stargatis]

@@SeverusFelixhahah no, I’m green because my undertone is cooler. If you like fashion, I’m a Winter. Summers also have a cool undertone that can come out as greenish, teal, or even sky blue❤ autumns and springs are warm toned. Peaches and cream is spring! Lucky! I always thought I must be an autumn because I saw myself as a bit dusty and dead haha but now I see if I embrace black and dark colors, my skin looks brighter❤I just love summer colors though

[@amalsp8955]

​@@stargatis😂

[@Rodrigo_Vega]

This just makes a lot more sense for artists than non-artist. Every color of anything can leans more towards red, blue or green. Having a greenish tint, doesn't mean an object's (or skin's) color is _actually green_ or greenish, only that it has "more green in it" than another hue of the same color... say from another brown or whatever. Most colors have all three colors, to different degrees.

[@Xannah]

I remember reading the hunger games as a kid and imagined katniss with literally green skin for the whole series

[@teri2466]

Tanned skin can have any undertone color.

[@tomhalla426]

I have Mexican Mestizo and Northern and Central European ancestry, and I tan fairly easily, but my skin tone is not “pink”. “Olive” effectively means nonPink.

[@bestaqua23]

Olive trees . The tree itself is about this colour

[@martso9288]

Cheese is a constant, yet it comes in many different shapes, colours and sizes.

[@helenbaumander3953]

I once put myself in a very awkward position of explaining to a group of 7-year-olds why I might refer to a person with light brown skin as black. There is one biracial girl in the class and I asked her if her mom or dad was black. They were making Father's Day cards, and she was going to draw a picture of him. I had talked to her about this sort of thing before, so I knew she wouldn't be bothered by the question. The other kids at the table were very confused.

[@mirasol0098]

Oh people with olive skin do actually be lookin' green when sick. Usually the red blood underneath the skin, together with the olive undertone form a shade of brown, however when the blood drains from a part of your body (let's say your limbs when you have a cold) the red is also gone and only green is left. And when you havn't got a lot of melanin in your skin the green shines through, like, a lot.

[@ermenher8381]

In my mind, olive-skinned and bronzed-skinned are related though not the same. Both are warm, tan skin tones. Though I connect olive-skinned more with ones base skin color, and bronzed-skinned with sun tanned skin that had a base color between light and mid. I also think of bronzed as a little sweaty/oily from labor. Because of this, I lean towards olive oil as the origin for the term olive-skinned as all three have a warm, yellow/light brown color. Also an interesting fact that may or may not have a connection. The ancient Greeks and Romans scrapped olive oil on and off their skin to clean it. Though I am not sure if the practice continued to the time that the term olive-skinned was coined.

[@timogul]

Yeah, basically. A light skinned person can have tones that are pinkish, greenish, ivory yellow-ish, or sienna orange-ish. Then the more tanned that person is, the darker a shade of those tones they'll end up with. And different people will have more or less saturated skin tones, so some might have a mid-tone color that looks very vibrantly sienna or pink, while others would have equally dark shaded skin, but be more muted, more like a sandy or salmon. Another thing about colors and light in general is that darker colors don't tend to look right if they are literally just a darker shade of that base color, like if you're painting an apple, you don't want to make the mid-tones "red" and then the shadows "red, but with black added," you generally want the shadows to be a bit more purple-bluish in hue than the mid-tones of the apple. Likewise with skin, the darker a skintone, the more cool colors it tends to pick up, and while nobody is _literally_ "blue," very dark tones will tend to _look_ more "blue" relative to a warmer colored environment, because they will have a very muted saturation.

[@tonymouannes]

I'm never heard of olive skin in my life, and having lived most of my life in Lebanon, I've never seen any green undertone in my life. What is being described here sounds more like people who get a tan in sun but lose it if not exposed to sunlight. That's very common around the Mediterranean. That's basically tanned, mostly because the color is a tan and not the base color of the skin.

[@GazilionPT]

I'm Portuguese and also do not use a term like "olive skin". We mostly use the term "moreno", which actually means "like the Moors". I think only people with no olive trees use a phrase like "olive skin"...

[@stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis1369]

Thats not quite what olive means but theres a lotta overlap

[@ShawnRavenfire]

I wonder who came up with the idea of sticking olives in martinis. It seems kind of random, like the bartender wanted to add something to the drink, and a jar of olives just happened to be the only thing available, or something.

[@stargatis]

It’s flavored with olive juice so they add an olive. That’s the “dirty “ part of dirty martini.

[@thomastakesatollforthedark2231]

​@@stargatis that just raises more questions!

[@ostrelephant]

Good video... until the end Olives are great!!!

[@HalfEye79]

In literature there is someone who is descripted with having an olive skin: Its Artréju from "Die Unendliche Geschichte" ("Neverending Story"). His skin was really green. I think, in the movie, there was an actor with a tanned (olive) skin.

[@LeeTheKnight]

I have found the the Fitzpatrick scale to be very helpful in helping inquisitive people understand my existence. I am from England & my skin shifts between type 2+3 on the Fitzpatrick scale. Both parents are also from England, one being type 1 & the other being type 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale.

[@diurtydantv8061]

Red pandas are neither red, nor pandas.

[@stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis1369]

Compared to some things called red they're not far off, and panda wise, they are the namesake of the Giant Panda Bear, named after looking like big red pandas, which indeed both cannot be made into a taxonomical group without including many not usually considered pandas hehe

[@GODDAMNLETMEJOIN]

Both pandas are much, much more closely related than some of the animals we call fish though

[@Jonas_Marshall]

Red: English didn’t have a word for Orange until 1502. (Erica Brizowsky - Otherwords) Panda: Believed to come from Nepali “Ponya” Meaning “Bamboo Eater” or “Bamboo footed” (a quick google search)

[@lafcursiax]

Thanks! I was just wondering about this yesterday!

[@GazilionPT]

That greenish shade of green only occurs when olives are picked before they are fully matute (hence, they are literally and metaphorically green). If you let the olives mature, they become almost black.

[@stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis1369]

ahh I made the connection with yellow limes but not green olives, theyre just unripe black olives (tho different varieties usually for different choice of ripeness presumably)

[@lynninpain]

My daughter's face is very pale and gets a bit freckled with sun. However if her arms get a bit tan they are absolutely olive toned. I am half Sicilian but I am not olive skinned, just very pale. My other half is mostly various northern European. I can't tolerate the sun at all. It's physically painful to sit in direct sunlight for more than a couple minutes. My children's father is Swedish, but has both German and English ancestry as well. Our youngest son looks a lot like his Sicilian American grandfather. Our oldest son looks rather Swedish but his skin gets very dark in summer. He does spend the most time outside though.

[@Kat-tr2ig]

I think skin should follow the same labeling system as hair texture, with a number and letter. So skin color would range from 1-4 (1 being the absolute palest and 4 being the absolute darkest) and undertone A-C (A warm, B cool, C neutral). So, for example, I would be a 1B (I'm sickly white with pink undertones), while my daughter, for example, would be a 2C (she's olive skinned, and yes, you can see that slight greenish tint). Anyway, I think it would make general classification easier.

[@NekoRagdoll]

I think the best synonym to describe olive skin is mediterranian. And I'm portuguese.

[@koppadasao]

Dolores takes Umbridge with everything...

[@paisan8766]

Gotta be the olive oil

[@kittyprydekissme]

Olive is an anagram of 'I love". As in 'I love your skin tone".

[@pennyspencer450]

My mum always said I had olive skin. I tan quite easily and deeply, like my dad who is of mixed European heritage. My mum is British, burns then freckles. But I actually have blue undertones to my skin, so now I don't know what to think!

[@FoggyD]

At some point in the Patrickverse, Portugal annexed land on the Mediterranean coast. I'm not sure what skin tone is universally understood as "olive-skinned": my mother's used it to describe both my old German teacher (a very pasty Welshwoman) and her own half-Somali granddaughters!

[@geirmyrvagnes8718]

Undertones... Yeah, that is too complex for a simple physicist. I don't get how colors are over and under each other. But now I want to see color spectra for various skin tones to see how much green shows up!

[@stargatis]

Ellie-Jean royden goes over skintones.

[@erraticonteuse]

People can get prickly about the term olive-skinned if they think you're trying to downplay or deny someone's racial or ethnic heritage. I remember there was some controversy when Jennifer Lawrence was cast in The Hunger Games because in the book Katniss is described as being olive-skinned, which Lawrence is not. And since the character is from Appalachia, people suggested that she could have been Melungeon, a mixed-race ethnicity from the region. While I believe the author said that wasn't her intent, I do think the controversy informed the decision to cast Rachel Zegler in the prequel (she's not Melungeon, but she is mixed white and Latina).

[@SergioGomez-eg7wr]

I wouldn’t say all tan skin is called olive I really think it’s about having those neutral greenish undertones, most people with those undertones do tan very easily but I’m still olive even in the winter when my skin is paler.

[@SergioGomez-eg7wr]

Or at least that’s mostly how it is in the beauty space, I personally have heard people use it both ways

[@AtarahDerek]

I use "olive skin" to refer specifically to Mediterranean skin tones. Jesus had olive skin. Probably on the darker end of the olive spectrum.

[@karlos_infamous]

I always use “dusky” - and I do not care who gets offended 😛😛

[@Ray_Vun]

didn't people in ancient times in the mediterranean countries used to rub olive oil on their skin? i always assumed that's why we got called olive skinned. my grandma used to have a little vial of olive oil to rub on like her elbows and such, i think for dry skin

[@mattisvov]

Just for fun, if we ran with the idea of using mountains to name racial phenotypes (like Caucasian), what others could we come up with? Asian could be Himalayan. Yeah that one is pretty solid. Perhaps the most impressive mountain range, and the name is beautiful and rolls of the tounge. African is a bit harder. Kilimanjaran (after Mt Kilimanjaro, tallest volcano on earth.) sounds pretty neat, but perhaps a bit unwieldy. We could also go with "Atlan" or "Atlanthean" after the Atlas mountains. I also want to suggest an alternative to Caucasian: "Alpine". Not only are the Alps central to the region this phenotype originated in, it invokes associations to ice and snow, the very climate that shaped it. "Andean" could be Native American or maybe specifically Native South American. The lines drawn between phenotypes are of course a bit arbitrary.

[@susannpatton2893]

😂 I'm Melungeon and we are all different shades. Meaning that I'm olive no matter if I'm in the sun or not.

[@Dobjob]

What about honey coloured skin?

[@LadyPantera57]

Someone can also end up with olive tone if one of their parents is darker and the other parent is lighter and they end up somewhere in the middle, even if neither parent has Mediterranean origins.

[@deborahhulme5137]

Interesting!

[@Kosovar_Chicken]

I made the theory that it came from using olive oil as sunscreen

[@mingfanzhang4600]

❤

[@mingfanzhang8927]

😊

[@ericmccown6768]

I’m currently looking at my Spanish gf trying to figure out if she looks like an olive.

[@TheSpiritombsableye]

It's not. Episode over.

[@mingfanzhang8927]

😊😊😊

[@mingfanzhang4600]

😊

[@johningham1880]

If they have been pitted and stuffed with pimento, then “olive” might be suitable

[@Kev4Kev]

What about the people that actually had blue skin due to Methemoglobinemia

[@gunnasintern]

shoutout to Yakub (Peace Be Upon Him) for using literal olives to create my skin tone

[@EGSBiographies-om1wb]

I was watching one of the many cycst popping vids. They popped the cycst of a black woman. The puss came out black. The cycst doctor said that doesnt always happen.

[@bensantos3882]

We need to stop with stupid offenses. My father grew up with redskin being an Amerindian. He never saw this as an insult and he married a White woman. When I asked this about being insulted by this, he said 'My skin is red and I'm a Red skinned man, I married your mother and she is White. Has she ever feel ashamed of being called a White Woman?

[@IndicaPrincess]

Caucasian doesn’t refer to skin color. It’s an anthropological Classification based on skeletal anatomy & other structural features. Like people from India are classified as Caucasian. The only reason Caucasian is associated with skin color is due to stricter immigration laws in the USA at the turn of the 20th century. Caucasian started being associated with looking typically Western European

[@ozymandias3097]

because Yakub (Peace Be Upon Him) in his unending genius originally used olives to create this color.

[@RegentPandora]

As a white race man, I'm so glad we were created. Praise be Yakub!

[@murrvvmurr]

4:16 tell me you don't know any non diasporic Africans without telling me you don't know any non diasporic Africans 😂😂😂

[@reviewerofcomments]

clicked off after the detailed explanation of what an olive was like i'm an alien who just landed on earth.

[@davea6314]

I typically prefer to date pale freckled skin ginger women than olive skin Mediterranean women. I'm a Yank. That Limey men are often repulsed by freckled ginger women seems strange to me. It's probably based in anti-Irish bigotry.

[@Tafrara-idir]

I remember somebody using the term I don't remember why and where it happened tho. I saw it maybe in a KZbin video

[@CallunaNightWolf]

I also hate olives the fruit

[@Benwut]

I'm a Tunisian and Mestizos Mexican mix, so I am definitively olive skinned. And that is purely differentiated from my Persian wife's skin tone by the fact she has a pinkish undertone, whilst mine is greenish. Despite our overtones being almost identical.

[@vinsanity_52]

Metetrianan skin does have a green undertone. You can especially see it when my wife doesnt have a tan who has sicilian and Lebanese ancestry.

[@EGSBiographies-om1wb]

102nd

[@sparky6086]

"Caucasian" is a race, not a skin tone. For instance; most South Asians are caucasian, but have tanned skin. Most Swedish are also caucasian, but have fair skin.

[@voodoolilium]

Races are also pseudoscience.

[@martychisnall]

Olive skinned doesn’t mean tanned and Caucasian doesn’t mean white. Where did you get this misinformation from?

[@erraticonteuse]

Caucasian absolutely has been used to mean white-skinned. The story behind why is a clusterfk of colonialism and eugenics (Patrick should totally make a video about it) and that's part of why it has fallen out of use, but you still see it on forms sometimes.

[@espeonstarz4665]

olive creates a color that most people get from tanning, and caucasian has always been used to descrivbe white people

[@lachlanchester8142]

Have you seriously never heard of people use white and Caucasian interchangeably

[@lesterstone8595]

The olive is not the only fruit that is a skin tone. Don't forget President Trump and his orange-colored skin. Oranges are fruits. 🟠