In a word Yes.
So how YOU doin? 
I prefer shorter styles on women with straight hair but long curly hair is incredibly attractive… a cascade of wavy curls and ringlets is just mesmerizing and completely intoxicating. Same for deep, dark eyes.
When’m I going to get that picture? 
And Sesiron? Typo?
I’m with what seems to be the majority in that skin color doesn’t matter. My last girlfriend was Haitian, my current is Japanese, and I’ve dated women of various and sundry shades before them. I am an adamant equal-opportunity lecher. If she’s hot, I don’t care what color her skin is. She could have milky-white skin or be so dark that the highlights are bluish as long as she has an attractive face and body. Skin color doesn’t really make any difference to me as long as it suits the woman. I’m leaving personality and other important factors of compatibility out of this since initial attractiveness is based almost completely on visible cues.
Biologically, there actually is an underlying reason for men to have a preference for lighter skin: women’s skin darkens with age and pregnancy. The same woman in adolescence will be a few shades lighter than when she is approaching the end of her prime breeding years. This is true regardless of her sun exposure and base skin color.
She could be a Sub-Saharan African who is continually exposed to equatorial sun, and her skin will be slightly lighter in her teens and early twenties than it will be in her thirties or forties. Women’s skin actually lightens at puberty, possibly as an indication that she is physically mature and ready to have children, while her skin darkens slightly with successive pregnancies. Men, in contrast, become darker in skin tone at puberty and tan more easily and more darkly than a woman of equivalent skin type. Women show a strong preference for darker skin, the opposite of men’s preferences and completely reasonable in light of sexual dimorphism.
That said, it seems that some of the main barriers that make some people automatically discount a person’s attractiveness based on skin color are cultural. In my experience also, people within a racial group tend to be more attuned to those subtle changes in skin color than outsiders. You probably would never hear a European-American say something like “She’s a light-skinned black,” for instance but I’ve heard African-Americans say something to that effect more than once.
Haitians (as I found out from D’s family) have dozens of different words for skin color and the social standing that in many cases is linked to it. If a woman’s skin is too dark, the guy’s family or friends might put pressure on him to break it off.
I live in Japan and some Japanese women go to extremes to protect themselves from the sun. I’ve seen ladies, out gardening on days when the heat was enough to fell a Bedouin, who were wearing long sleeves and wore half-sleeves on top of those whose only function was to protect the back of the hand from sun. Some women constantly wear gloves and use umbrellas when outside to keep their skin more pale. Part of the reason for this is age-prevention, but part of it is the cultural ideal that high-class women have pale skin.
My Cambodian friends I hung out with when I was younger said that there was a definite hierarchy when it came to skin color. Lighter, more Asian-looking skin was supposed to be associated with people who came from (again) high-class families who never mixed with the slaves the French imported.
In all the cases I cited, which are drawn from my (admittedly limited) personal experience with the cultures involved, the discrimination had to do with social standing and thus the woman’s suitability as a marriage partner. Light skin = higher social status in many cultures.
Why, I don’t know for sure. I’ve heard that even African cultures that have minimal contact with European ideals sometimes hold this to be true. My guess is that it might be a conscious expression of the mostly unconscious set of criteria that we use to judge a person’s attractiveness.
Sorry. I was probably typing faster than I was thinking. It was Monday, after all!
And check MPSIMS - I posted to you.
Since you asked.No.I don’t find brown-skinned people attractive.I don’t mind being friends with them,but it doesn’t turn me on at all…
Skin color, as long as it’s natural, means little.
Pretty is pretty, IMHO.
But, I suppose you’ll find that’s a common answer from the men here.
From what I’ve observed, Straight Dope men tend to be a bit more enlightened and less prone to drawing lines along racial/skin color boundaries.
Well, thank you for your kindness in not minding being friends with us, but I think we’ll pass. :wally
I think the features are more important than the skin color, but sometimes those are linked. I liked sharper features, so I tend to gravitate toward the women of northern European decent because of it.
You’ve spilled cream on yourself? Can I come and lick it off?
As long as all the right bits are in the right places in roughly the right proportions then your skin colour matters not one whit.
No need to apologize… I was just making sure it was a typo and not some sort of sly reference or allusion to something I wasn’t familiar with. You can never be too certain it’s one or the other on the SDMB.
Though skin colour isn’t of great importance for sexual partners. Rice pudding must have a dark brown skin.
Last call for the vomit smiley!
Yes x million. I’m typically Anglo-Saxon white myself, which I consider to be just plain bad luck. Brown skin looks better in general, and as for dark or brown-skinned women, well, for me it’s the closest thing I’ve got to a religion to say that they just look better, and more attractive, than any alternative. I have a hard time understanding that anyone could seriously think otherwise.