Abstract
Many Japanese women are concerned about the darkness of their skin. However, the treatment for skin darkness have not, until now, been thoroughly tackled because of vagueness of skin darkness.
Our study is aimed at clarifying skin darkness.
Firstly, a questionnaire on the awareness of skin darkess was conducted on 975 Japanese women to determine the average consumers interpretation of “darkness”. Secondly, evaluations on “subjective” and “objective” darkness in female faces were simultaneously conducted on 167 women with the aim of grasping the relation between subjective and objective darkness in the same person. Finally, components of “objective darkness” were examined, and the following information was obtained.
The awareness of skin darkness among Japanese women can be expressed by two factors: a “blackish” factor, and a “drooping” factor, associated with morphological elements.
The evaluation of darkness requires the specification of facial sites because degrees of agreement between subjective “darkness consciousness” and objective “darkness impression” are different according to the sites.
Components of darkness impression are color tone and morphology. A moderately deteriorated morphology in particular was assumed to have influence on the darkness impression similar to the color tone.
