I want a metaphor for someone with a pale complexion. If it helps, this woman is middle-aged and has a cold, haughty demeanour. I don't want anything too pretentious but I would like to see what you guys can come up with! Thanks in advance
You could compare her face to a marble slate. Or you could compare her white, cold and polished exterior to the walls of a hospital room.
You can say something like, "Her snowflake skin matched her personality - devoid of any warmth. It looked as though she hadn't seen the sun in about 20 years." Just what I came up with off the top of my head, but you get the idea.
Her skin was like typing paper that had been through the wash. We snickered and called her the Origami Diva -- well out of earshot, of course.
The first thing I thought of was the moon. In East Asian cultures, pale-faced women are compared to the moon - although I will note that usually when we do so, it's because we find such paleness attractive; in the old days (and even nowadays to some extent), the ideally attractive woman in East Asian had a pale and rounder face. However, I like the other suggestions everybody else made, particularly the marble or the ghost. Remember that you should try to make the metaphor match their personality or what not really well...
I've seen several authors use the description, 'Her skin was so pale it was translucent.' I never cared for it myself because it always brings to mind the thought of the red muscle and sinew under the skin.
"Does she even have a blood-supply to her face?" "It seems not. That's why we call her the Ice Queen. One reason, anyway."
Her face was pale, as if life had frightened her once or twice. Her face was pale, as if one foot were in the grave already. Her skin was as pale as a winter storm. Her skin was as ice, and her gaze as a winter storm. Some ideas.
'To me she was like karma or yin and yang or whatever they call it. A cold soul as deep and as dark as bottomless pit to go with a cadaverous facial tint that could paint asylum walls. A perfectly terrible balance of a woman.' I have no idea if this would fit at all but I had fun with it.
Her dark hair framed the snowy complexion of her face, as her ruby red lips and cool, penetrating blue eyes contrasted her lily white skin. Her fingertip slowly and gently rose up before her milky face, coming to a rest in front of her crimson lips as she said "Shhhhhh"... ...and silently took the last After Eight Mint and left none for the rest of us.
Ghastly/ghostly white. Her skin was so ghastly white, it made one wonder had she shared her bed with a vampire last night? Her ghostly white complexion sent shivers down my spine. Her ghastly white complexion is bad enough to scare Marley's ghost. Sun-starved complexion.
