Valerie Monroe – former beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, and a friend of mine – answers this and many more beauty-related questions in her blog “How to not f**ck up your face“.
The topic relates to reserarch I have been conducting with partners from industry, showing that women and men are remarkably sensitive to even small changes in skin colorouration.
Here are a few examples:
Fink, B., Butovskaya, M., Sorokowski, P., Sorokowska, A., & Matts, P.J. (2017). Visual perception of British women’s skin colour distribution in two non-industrialized societies, the Maasai and the Tsimane. Evolutionary Psychology, 15(3), 1474704917718957.
Fink, B., Grammer, K., & Matts, P.J. (2006). Visual skin color distribution plays a role in the perception of age, attractiveness, and health of female faces. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(6), 433-442.
Matts, P.J., Fink, B., Grammer, K., & Burquest, M. (2007). Colour homogeneity and visual perception of age, health and attractiveness of female facial skin. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 57(6), 977-984.
Fink, B., Matts, P.J., Klingenberg, H., Kuntze, S., Weege, B., & Grammer, K. (2008). Visual attention to variation in female facial skin colour distribution. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 7(2), 155-161.