Let's play spot the human shades.
When I was in reception (or "kindergarten" or whatever you want to call it) there was a girl in my class with special needs who was obsessed with the colour yellow. If I love my theoretical future kids as much as this girl loved yellow, they will be some lucky, spoiled kids.
This girl used to steal everyone's yellow pencils and put them in her drawer (which we all knew about) and if anyone was ever in the pure need you have for colouring pencils you can only have as in infant or a geography student, we'd have to go and ask her for permission to use our own stuff. No one really understood why she liked it. But it stressed her out if she didn't have those yellow pencils and we were all pretty chill kids so that's how it worked. No one understood what she meant, I mean, but me. Because the level of love she had for those yellow pencils, was the level of pure, demonic hatred I had for that insipid fucking shade of not-quite-peach that everyone INSISTED TO ME was called "skin colour".
Shady little bitch that I was (and am) I nearly immediately put everyone on notice that I was not cool with that name. It was not only inaccurate (white people, you are not that colour) but it was also DEEPLY offensive to me, the SOLE brown child in a white class/ school/ county/ country (let's be real).
If you asked me to pass you the "skin colour" pencil, I would pass you a brown pencil. Because, FUCK YOU, that's why. And, do you know what? I stand by it. So it will come as ZERO.ZERO surprise to you that upon reaching the joyless age (5? 6?) of having to wear tights everyday (i.e. not super-thick and woollen and saved only for winter) I was somewhat less-than-thrilled about a couple of aspects of this tight-wearing practice. Firstly, "Nude" means naked. That is what that means. It doesn't mean a vague approximation of the colour of a slightly vitamin D deprived white lady. But maybe that's just my dictionary. SECONDFUCKINGLY, I can honestly say I would give less of a shit about the (terrible) naming conventions practiced by the distributers of women's hosiery if they EVER bothered to TRY to manufacture ANY tights in colour schemes other than "white", "whiter", "whitest". Money's still money you arseholes, even if it comes from brown people. Do I need to get the CEO of MAC on the phone to teach you this VERY SIMPLE premise? The last time I checked, Chinese businesses were doing very well out of black hair-care products (a separate issue, to which I am sure I will one day, get) so get your head out of your arse and stop making me wear black tights throughout what we in this country laughably call Summer! I hate you all is what I'm saying. Also on this moron list are: all the makeup ranges of the major fashion-houses, the people who make "nude" bras and shoes (not you Louboutin, you've grasped this one) and all major chemists (save one fucking shelf in some Boots) in the UK. You are morons, I hope you go into liquidation.
"You mean they come in different colours?!"
There is also the point that this lazy approach to colour-matching, despite literally everything I've written above, is not particular to their brown customers. If I had a pound for every time one of my white friends told me a product (whether it was tights, foundation or some other bizarrely colour-matched item) didn't go pale enough or was too yellow or too pink, after I stopped laughing, I'd start again... all the way to the bank. See what I did there? They aren't even doing their racism correctly. And that, my friends, is a step too far. So I take all my friends to my #brownbrands (I'm looking at you MAC and Bobbi Brown) so that they can buy a realistic colour made by a company which has actually bothered to consider the colour humans actually come in. Which, at this point, I think we can all agree is not just, "skin".