I’ve given up tanning because it just doesn’t work on my skin, despite living in hot and sunny countries for the last four years.
Here, next to all the tanning and sun lotions aimed at western expats, the supermarket shelves are also stacked with “fair and lovely” skin whitening products and facial bleaches. (“Fair and lovely” is a brand name by the way).
So ironic that half the women here are burning themselves into wrinkles, cancer and premature ageing, while the other half are doing god knows what damage stripping their skin of all its natural melanin.
Heh. It’s like half the women perming their hair, and the other half straightening it. I guess the grass is always greener (or tanner) on the other side.
I don’t actively seek to tan my skin, but my lifestyle and the climate of my home would have it otherwise. My genes - half South-East Asian - contribute too. I do a fair bit of sailing and developed an affection for the beach this summer. This things have contributed to the rather even shade of brown that my skin is.
I use sunscreen on my neck and face religiously, but really shouldn’t go shirtless as often as I do.
Atttitudes around here are a little ambivalent towards tanning. On one hand, we have a vigorous government campaign urging us to cover up. If I don’t wear sunscreen or a hat (which I hate doing since they usually give me a headache), I’ll have half a dozen friends nagging me to protect myself. The dangers of skin cancer were well-drilled into our heads before we had left primary school. We know it’s unhealthy and quite stupid to expose ourselves to the sun. On the other hand, it looks good. Just a foolish societal perception of attractiveness I know, but tanned skin is perceived as healthy and desirable, part and parcel of a wholesome outdoors lifestyle. (Part of the whole bronzed Aussie icon, I s’pose.)
When I lived in Florida I was fanatical about protecting my skin after having basal cell skin cancers removed at age 23. Now living in Michigan I still practice “slip slop slap” but when that sun finally does peek out after months of winter (which is back in full force today with 3 inches of snow on the ground) I just love to soak up the warming rays and feel the hot deck boards under my feet.
I always get comments in the summer regarding my long sleeves or chinos on a hot day “How can you wear that? Aren’t you hot!” Listen I’d be hot even if I was naked - I m keeping the burining rays off of my sun damaged skin, you leather backs!
The way I heard it, light skibn was for a very long time the ideal for the rich and powerful – it proved that you didn’t have to work outside, and could afford to stay indoors and have servants carry parasols (the words “parsasol” (“for the sun”) and “umbrella” (“little shade”) both suggest that what most people use as rain-shields are really used to keep the sun off – like the upper class do) to keep their skin untanned. Then in the 20th century more and more people had to work indoors at factory and desk jobs, so white untanned skin was no longer the exclusive domain of the rich. So tanned skin became the new standard, because it showed that you didn’t have to work at an indoor job all day, and could afford to jet off to the tropics during the winter.
Then heightened awareness about skin cancer came along and screwed all that up. People haven’t settled on a single way to react to that. We have equality of the skin tones now, because of across-the-class-lines health consciousness. But some people still insist on tanning. And even if you’re lower class, you still have access to tanning booths.
that’s how i heard it, CalMeacham. pale skin used to mean you didn’t have to slave away in fields or in hard labour of any kind. now it insinuates you work all day and can’t get a vacation. my, how times change!
i seem to remember (i’ll try to find a link for it if i can) that the first instance of “tan being classy” was in the 1920s when coco chanel was shown with a deep bronze tone whilst lounging away in the tropics. tan equalled glamour because, hey, lookit coco!
Isn’t that where the term “blue bloods” arose from as well? The rich and royalty folk stayed inside…little skin color, hence their veins (with bluish tint) were visible.
I love the sun! I use suncreen (full-body during the summer and cosmetics containing sunscreen the rest of the year) but I don’t limit my time outside. I’m jonesing so bad for summer and sunshine right now, I can’t even tell you. I have an olive skin tone anyway, (half Mexican, half Norwegian) so while I don’t try to tan, because I spend my summer weekends playing volleyball at the beach or the ballpark or rollerblading or biking or gardening, it happens anyway.
Yeah, I’ll probably pay for it with some wrinkles. But I think a few wrinkles will be worth it for a lifetime of happy and active summers.
Checking in as a sunburned woman.
I did sit out in the sun this weekend-it was glorious- I LOVE the sun. I wear 15 on my face every day of the year, and also on my body if I know that I’m going to be out boating or something for an extended period of time.
However, I rolled over on my stomach for what I meant to be a minute to watch the dogs play, didnt have sunscreen on the back, and fell asleep. For at least an hour.
I am fried, whimpering, disgusted with myself, etc.
I grew up in Florida, though, when we used those metallic sun-dial mats and baby oil. Every year.
I look SO much better with a little color. My skin is olive, so if its too pale, its not peaches-n-cream, honey…It’s sallow-yellow-dead looking.
Love love love the sun, love the heat, love the feeling of “baking” with sun and heat on my skin. Spent far too many days as a teen using SPF 0. Who knew back then? Certainly not us.
I’m much more careful now, although I can easily spend a day just laying in the sun. It’s so therapeutic for me, and I look FAR better with some color in my skin. I’m blond but with medium skin and green eyes. I burn a little at first but tan completely.
Only been to a tanning salon about 5 times, and it was the 5 weeks before my wedding 3 years ago. Haven’t been since.
I, for one, am freakishly pale (or peaches and cream as my mom calls it) - in the summertime, I can pick up a sunburn in 10 minutes flat. :o (get it? a sunburn smiley? because his cheeks are red? anyway…)
Although I don’t actively avoid the sun (I was a lifeguard last summer) I take serious precautionary measures - SPF 45, full body, every 2 and a half hours. It’s a pain in the ass but hey, sunburns reallllly hurt! (for me it’s more about that than skin cancer, wrinkles etc.)
(And tanning salons … did anyone see the second I Know What You Did Last Summer? when Jennifer Love Hewitt got locked inside a tanning bed? aaaah!)
I spend a lot of time outdoors in the summer but I religiously coat myself with SPF 30. I have only been sunburned twice, in recent years; usually if I don’t use any sunscreen I just tan. When I used to tan, people would ask me if I was Hispanic because my skin would get so dark.
But I’m really worried about cancer and wrinkles so I never tan anymore. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when the gang went to the Hampton’s (I think it was the “Jeeerry, ya gotta see tha baaaaaby!” episode)? Elaine shows up at the pool in a huge hat, a caftan, and glasses and slathers on SPF. That’s me. I have no desire whatsoever to have cripsy brown-red skin these days.
I will use self-tanner but I can never really get it even. I usually only use it when I’m going out to a smoky dark club, so I’ll look a little tan but no one notices the streaks.
Besides, white skin is beautiful over here in Japan. I’ve lost count the number of times women have come up to me, stroked my arm and sighed “Your skin is so WHITE. You are really lucky.”
I’m kind of glad I burn so easily, since it’s a very obvious reminder that I need to put on sunscreen. I’ve had some serious burns, plenty of light ones, and I try to make each summer a burn-free one. I don’t wear sunscreen year-round, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time outside either.
