I put natural in quotes because I want to distinguish between the color you were born with, and the color you’re capable of being now. This distinction is the essence of my question.
I’m pretty sure that I’m not unlike most people in that some skin on my body is darker than the skin on other parts. Face, arms and calves, for example, are dark; back and sweater twins are light(er). Not surprisingly, the lightest coloration is on parts of my body they get little/no sunlight.
So does this mean the lightest parts of our bodies are what we would be if we avoided the sun? Can enough browning throughout the years make the coloring permanent? That is, after enough years in the sun, does the skin on our sun-exposed parts adapt, and can never become as light as the skin on our covered parts? Or could we hide naked in a dark basement for six months, and have our entire bodies become the same color? I know you can sunbathe your way into uni-shade, but can you sun-starve yourself into this as well?
My natural color is fishbelly white. But this year I have actually gotten a tan by exposing myself to the sun for about 15 to 30 minutes a day. I think it looks great and I’ve even gotten compliments. However, If there happen to be 3 days in a row where I don’t get out in the sun all is lost. I’m back to Poppin’ Fresh. So I would say yes. Without any outside influence from the sun, tanning beds, etc. you are stuck with the color you are born with.
This is, of course, non scientific anecdotal evidence. (But I’d bet my snow white ass on it.)
I’d always assumed the unsunned parts being lighter was an evolutionary trick–Since they were not in the sun as often, the lighter pigmentation was not selected out of the population.
What I’ve often wondered is if there is actually an advantage to the lighter skin.
We spend half the year with almost no sun exposure here. My beautiful, tanned self resorts to one shade of pale every October through April. In the summer I am a bronzed Adonis.
Since we’re offering anecdotes… I’ve always been pretty pale and it’s taken some effort to get me to tan even a little. When the English summer condescended to offer a drop of sunshine, I tended to go red, then back to white again. However I spent a year almost constantly in the sun in Southern Europe and tanned very deeply with no burning. Since then (this would be about three or four years ago), the least bit of sun causes me to tan much more quickly and efficiently; so it does appear that my skin “got the idea” during that sun-drenched year and now knows what to do. I’m not sure that really contributes to answering your question.
I know that generally people become darker when regularly exposed to the sun, and lighter when kept out of the sun. I know that if you’re fish-belly white in winter (or whenever), you can hop into a tanning bed and toast yourself up.
My question is can your face, which I’m guessing the is the most sun-exposed part of you, ever become as light as the lightest parts of your body? Yes, I realize that if you did hide naked in a dark basement for half a year, all of you is going to become paler, but after, say, 35 years of sun exposure, have your sun-exposed parts become permanently dark, and can never be as light (no matter how much naked basement hiding you do) as your fish-belly stomach?
I meant naturally. People can laser away all kinds of stuff.
So if your mom hid out in a dark room naked for a year, her face wouldn’t become the same color as the rest of her? Outside of the freckles, that is. I’m pretty sure freckles wouldn’t just go away because she stayed inside.
Why not? Does melanin produced by the sun become permanent after long enough?
Yep. My face, and entire body, will become homogeneously pale by the middle of the winter. I’m a white European transplant though, and you’re not. So perhaps your pigments do other stuff?
Iiiinteresting. How much sun do you get all year long? Would that be the case if you lived in, say, Arizona, where it’s sunny most of the year? Would you become permanently semi-darkened then? Does minimal sun exposure reduce your ability to stay dark? And prolonged, continued exposure will increase this? Does this differ among races? Am I asking too many questions?
OK, well, my dad and my grandfather both worked outdoors for their entire lives (as farmers and cement masons) and I can tell you that even in the dead of winter, when my dad has his shirt off, you can very clearly see the line where his short sleeves stop. The skin below that point is slightly darker and more leathery; above it, it is milky white.
Possibly you have to spend a significant amount of time outside every day to get this effect.
Interesting. See, that’s what I thought, but I’m not sure why I think that. Even if your dad spent months indoors and shirtless, I don’t suppose his forearms would come to match his shoulders. Why would that be? If he’s darker in the face and forearms due to sun exposure, why wouldn’t their color match his chest and upper arms if stays out of the sun for long enough?
Will enough exposure irreversibly darken you? That’s what I suspect, but I don’t know what I’m talking about.
It depends on what happens during that exposure. Ordinary melanin production is completely reversible, and that’s what most people are reporting. Even those of us who don’t tan well can achieve some darkening through repeated exposure, and that’s reversible too. But my outer forearms, having been sunburned over and over and over again, no longer lighten like the rest of my skin, even though I’ve worn long-sleeved shirts exclusively for years. It’s not the same color that I achieved when I did the careful tanning over my whole body – it’s got a blotchy pink undertone, darker brown spots like big freckles, and it’s mostly just a little more ivory-toned than my alabaster inner forearms. It’s also got a slight leathery texture, and looks older than the rest of my skin, and I’m pretty sure that this indicates a degree of damage could easily have led to multiple melanomas.
prolonged solar exposure will damage the skin. whether this leads to a colour change i do not know. I personally have faithfully avoided a beach-tan sun thing for many years now.
My daughter has naturally light brown skin. She got very tan one summer, and for 3 years after that, you could still see the lighter skin on her back where her swimsuit criss-crossed her back, despite having a different suit without the criss-cross straps after that year. The skin there is still lighter to this day.
I wear sunscreen on my face during the sunnier part of the year* because 1. I’d like to avoid skin cancer 2. I don’t want my face to freckle like my arms do. This time of year my face is a lot paler than my well sunned arms (not that they’re too dark either; I inherited my skintone from the Irish branches of the family tree) which are freckly and constantly mildly sunburned. After a few weeks of living in shorts my legs are only now starting to freckle, but are still way lighter than my arms.
This far north we don’t get enough sun to make any vitamin D naturally March-November, so I don’t worry about sun exposure then.
I am naturally pale peach white, and have been since I was a baby, but after years and years of living in the tropic, and getting sunburn after sunburn, and extremely prolonged hours of sun for many years as a kid, i noticed I now have a permanent farmer’s tan on my forearms, of a light brown tone, except for palm side of them. The rest of my body burns red and doesn’t really tan that well, and my face and neck which got a ton of exposure, but nowhere near as much as my arms, have an orange-palish permanent tan.
I guess it really depends on each person, some will permanently tan after a long period of exposure, i’d say it has to be a very long time of constant, border line unhealthy exposure to do so.