When I was in the Air Force in the 1980s, I served with a woman whose parents were both from West Africa, and whose skin was the most gorgeous shade of blue-black I had ever seen.
Juliet was a beautiful woman who could have been a fashion model, I think, if she hadn’t decided to pursue academics and become an intelligence analyst.
She used to get so upset about all the “exotic beauty" comments she drew. I once partially fictionalized her in a novel, and included a scene at the Tempelhoff Berlin officers club that really happened. Juliet and I had both recently arrived on base, friends because we had trained together, and we were sitting at the bar when a white southern “officer and gentleman" with an accent straight out of Gone With the Wind approached her and began to hit on her in ways that were clearly unethical even for the time.
He wasn’t the first officer in Berlin to call her exotic, and he would not be the last. She explained exactly why it was offensive, just before she threw her drink in his face.
Needless to say, she did not enjoy a long career in the Air Force.