Object To provide skin external preparations which are stable and are superior in a skin-tension feeling effect or skin-elasticity feeling effect after application therewith to the skin. Also to provide skin external preparations which are excellent in adhesiveness to the skin and have a non-sticky feeling, in addition to the above described stability and the skin-tension feeling effect. Means of attaining the object A skin external preparation comprising a finely dispersed wax composition in which the wax is finely dispersed in a solid or semisolid form in an aqueous dispersion medium, which preparation is characterized in that the above finely dispersed wax composition contains a wax being solid or semisolid at ordinary temperature, a nonionic surfactant, an aqueous dispersion medium, and an ionic water-soluble thickener, optionally further contains silicone oil and/or fluorinated oil which is liquid at ordinary temperature, and the mass ratio of the nonionic surfactant to the wax being 1.0 or more, the particle size of the finely dispersed wax is 500 nm or less, and it substantially contains no ionic surfactants therein.