Let's Talk Color:
The lack of representation of people of color in the Mario series is still a lively topic. Being that I'm Daisy crazy, I happen to have experience comparing Daisy to all the other Mario characters in many ways. I wanna talk about this because when it comes to the development of Daisy's appearance, one thing people seem to pinpoint a lot is her skin-tone.
I'm comparing Mario, Daisy, and Waluigi here. Why? Mario and Luigi almost always have the same skin-tone, and Waluigi usually takes his skin-tone from Wario. All details of the Mario characters are a little variable even now, mind you.
To Begin With:
Starting from before these characters were rendered in three-dimensions, let's look at their early representations in two-dimensions. Mario's skin-tone was very simmilar to how it appears today. Sometimes he was lighter, sometimes he was more medium. Daisy's was also as it is today; pretty light. In the art for Super Mario Land Daisy was noticeably lighter than Mario, but as of NES Open Tournament Golf it was more similar if not slightly lighter still. Waluigi's concept art surprisingly shows him with very uniquely pallor skin-tone.
Back in My Day:
Moving to the Nintendo 64 era, Mario games made a change to 3D to keep-up with video-games of this time. In Mario Tennis, artwork depicts Daisy with a bit of a tan. She actually still has a very similar if not still lighter skin-tone to Mario, who as of Super Mari 64 sports this current tan skin-tone. What got people noticing Daisy's tan was how as of this time Peach had noticeably lighter skin than Mario and Luigi. So compared to Peach, which is all people were doing with Daisy, they noticed a tan. In the same art, Wario and Waluigi sport deeper skin-tones than Mario, Luigi, and Daisy, though. Wario usually had the same skin-tone as Mario prior to this, so this was a new distinction. Oddly enough, in-game Waluigi is one of the only characters with a unique skin-tone. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, and even Wario all had the same lighter skin-tones they sported prior to 3D.
As of Mario Party 3, things changed a bit. In the artwork, Daisy still had a similar but slightly lighter tan to Mario and Luigi, and Wario and Waluigi had their own skin-tones, and Peach was still lighter than the others. In-game, Daisy actually had the exact same skin-tone as Mario and Luigi, except for a noticeable variance in the color. Waluigi's skin-tone was also more in-line with his artwork.
The End of an Era:
A sort've in-between of the end of this era and the coming one, Super Smash Bros. Melee used the Mario series' designs of the Nintendo 64. Possibly because this was a very early game in the GameCube era, to the point the Mario series hadn't been shown with it's updated look yet. So it really solidified these looks, and also used them for the last time while they were at it. Mario and Daisy still sported their tan skin-tones, but this time Mario was noticeably darker than Daisy. And Waluigi is shown to have unquestionably dark skin.
Before I go over everything all together, I've also provided a number of artworks of Mario, Daisy, and Waluigi throughout the start of the GameCube era in 2002 all the way until now in 2014. Mario is consistently of a light or medium skin-tone. Daisy is consistently of a unique light skin-tone. Waluigi is consistently of a medium or deep skin-tone.
So What Does This Mean:
So what does this mean? What can you take from all this? You can take that as far as the N64 era was concerned, Daisy wasn't by any means dark, she simply was no longer as light as Peach. Heck, even her ginger hair was notably darker during this time-period. She was still lighter or the same as most of the other characters. So even though she's not really tan now like she was during this time, that tan wasn't clearly there to represent a dark skin-tone or a person of color. As of her appearances after Melee, she was still given a unique skin-tone from Peach. Sometimes she's lighter than Peach, but she always sports a unique skin color from Peach. This means compared to the other characters, because you shouldn't only compare Daisy to Peach, Daisy is actually more unique now when it comes to her skin-tone than she ever was previously; if you disagree with this your Daisy-fu is weak and not up to my level, nerd.
If anyone should be the answer to the representation of a person of color, it would be Waluigi. Maybe even more-so than Wario if you take some inconsistencies into mind. But also taking inconsistencies into mind, it is unlikely Waluigi or Wario are meant to be representative of anything for people of color, either, unfortunately. If they were, they would likely be more recognized for it.
In Closing:
So in closing, why do people so strongly focus on Daisy's tan, then. It lasted seemingly one full year from 2000 to 2001, occurs in only 3 of Daisy's almost 50 appearances, and was by FACT less significant than the tans most other Mario characters sported at the exact same time. Well I can only assume it's because due to graphical-limitations of the N64 games, and due to the Melee costume Peach had representing Daisy, most people were first introduced to Daisy in a way they perceived her as a literal color-swap of Peach; though she never has been. So if all you focused on is the color-differences, Daisy looked dark compared to Peach. She wasn't dark, but that was what people were left thinking.
To me, it's all simply unfortunate. They did a lot to make Daisy more unique as of the GC era, so for people to not appreciate her for the character she has been for the majority of her appearances at this point, it just really disappoints me as a big fan of the character. Not just an aspect of the character, or a part of the character, or what I want the character to be, but who the character really is at this point, and what they've done with her to get her here.
And of course I understand wanting more for the character. I want a lot more for Daisy. But I'm very real about even just as far as her appearance is concerned. As I went over, Mario and Luigi have the same skin-tone. They also have the same hair color, same hairstyle, the same eye color, the same eye-shape, and especially the same outfit in different colors. Peach and Daisy have all that in the way of what is different, and whatever aspects of Peach and Daisy that are similar, are at least more different than most all other complementary characters in the Mario series. So to this day I don't get why she's still so misunderstood by so many.
There you go.
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