I think we are saying the same thing, Rose. I didn't mean olive is the total absence of pink, just that it is more yellow. Most people have both tones in their skin. Very few are one or the other. When yellow is predominant, it's olive. The more yellow you are, the more likely you are to be described that way, I suppose.
MAC's system is actually counterintuitive. NC is for warm-toned skin and NW is for cool skin. Since I am bad at explaining this, I'm just copying it from another website:
"The first step in selecting your shade is to simply look at your skin, without makeup, in daylight. If your skin looks more Yellow/Golden Olive or Golden Beige, you match with Neutral Cool or “NC” shades. If your skin is a neutral beige, you will match with the Neutral or “N” shades. If your skin looks more Pink Beige, you match with Neutral Warm or “NW” shades. This might seem backwards since usually we think of pinkish skin tones as cool and yellowish skin tones as warm. The reason for this is that MAC uses the makeup artists color wheel which is pretty much the opposite of what we usually think of as cool vs. warm. An easy way to look at it is like this: Think of each MAC foundation shade as being named with either the cool or warm shade that would neutralize and balance out your skin tone."
I'm currently using MAC's face and body foundation in C4. Interestingly they don't seem to have any W shades. Only C and N. Not sure why.
