I’m pale to the point of other people commenting on it frequently, but I’ve only ever gotten sunburnt three or four times and can tan to be really dark. It’s not like I slather on the SPF 100 every day; I use the same amount of sun protection as a normal person. But everything I read about tanning, skin cancer, etc. says that the biggest factor in determining how prone you are to sunburn is how fair your skin is. My dad’s side of the family is black haired, blue eyed, pale, and Irish. They get burned on lunch break walks outside. My mom’s side of the family is Yugoslavian, brown haired and eyed, and has the skin tone make-up companies call “olive.” They never burn. I got her skin tone, eyes, and hair and his paleness.
So what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I get sunburnt?
How can you have your mom’s skin tone AND your dad’s paleness. I can’t picture it. But I suspect you have a fair whack of melatonin in your skin… You are also saying that you use as much sunblock as any normal person - that should be enough to stop most uV rays from damaging your skin (which is how one tans) Also, it would depend a lot on exactly where you live - the sun’s incidence there might be low enough to not really get burned.
At the moment here in South Africa, we have a heat wave and a drought, so it is really SUNNY. Lot of sunburn cases. One of our more dour statistics (of which we have many, dour ones I mean) is that we’re just behind the Australians in skin cancer rates. This is one incidence where I don’t mind the Aussies winning!
I, too, am “pale olive” in skin tone. This frequently stumps make-up artists. In my case, my father is of Sicilian descent and my mother’s ancestors came from the British Isles. I don’t tan much at all, and I’ve only had a sunburn once in my life, when I managed to spend about 12 hours in one day lying on my belly, on one of those floating rafts. I don’t use ANY sunscreen, and never have, despite having lived in Las Vegas for about 8 years at one point. At 46, the skin on my legs is very dry, but that’s from another condition. My facial skin is still oily. It all boils down to the luck of the genetic card game, but we can influence it to some degree with our actions. But NOTHING is gonna make my skin look like porcelain.
I’m also paper-white (and it comes up frequently for me too! At a new year’s eve party I won the ‘palest skin’ competition!). I used to tan nicely until I was maybe 12 and since then I’ve been either white or red and few shades inbetween.
I used to spend my summers mostly outside, and I think that had a lot to do with it. I think once I began cooping up in the house my skin became less adaptive.
I am extremely pale- often relegated to the lightest shades of foundation, for example. And yet when I go out in the sun I quickly develop a very deep tan (last summer, my skin was the exact same color as my medium-skinned Japanese friend), and rarely burn at all.
It’s because I am an olive based pale, not the usual pink or blue based pale. My skin based on yellow tones. It’s subtle because I am so pale- most people don’t notice it until I wear certain colors and end up looking like a case of jaundice. No one else in my family is really like this- it must be some freak mediteranian ancestry manifesting itself.