As a fair-skinned member of a family with a history of skin cancer, I vote pasty. Last year, my idiotic roommate (and this isn’t the only reason she’s idiotic) would go to the beach every couple weekends and get BURNED. She has darker coloring, and a couple hours in the sun would make her tan, but she would sit outside all day and come home this awful shade of dark red, which she thought looked great. It made me ill just looking at the way she was wrecking her skin. What looks great as an eighteen-year-old will make you look hideous at forty.
uuugh! Welp, shoulda known better than to post this in front of a bunch of computer addicts! I think the points about melanoma are a little hyped up though. Also, being of Italian and Mexican descent(sp?) I have a naturally dark complexion. This combined with no family history(in a sun-lovin’ family) decrease my risk factors significantly for all three types of skin cancer: Basal and squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma. Mind you, I am in no way dismissing it as a risk nonetheless. The genes are working for me in another way as well, all of the older members of my family have fantastic looking skin, and a large portion of them are like me, living for the sun. I kind of think it may be because our skin(or at least mine) is a little on the oily side, so the sun seems to actually help our complexions maintain a balance. I know this is probably a better question for a dermatologist, but stmc62, does my line of reasoning hold water at all?
In any case, I relent to all you pastey people.
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
I’m from Michigan. We don’t tan much here. I don’t tan anyway, because I look similar to the way Stella described herself–redheaded, fair-skinned, no freckles. The thought of sunlight makes me burn. I’ve tried to tan, but I just can’t seem to get that magic combination of sunscreen/sun time right. I either burn, or I look like I never left the house. I finally just gave up, and decided that pasty is my destiny.
I don’t tan, either, just burn. I’ve given up on ever tanning. Besides, my tanned co-workers are all beginning to resemble alligator suitcases, so I’ve learned to appreciate my soft, supple, smooth, pasty, white skin. My husband appreciates it, too
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Well I don’t look pastey, I’m just pale. I like it. Unlike many pale people, I tan very easily–I have to really stay out of the sun to avoid it (which is easy, since I hate the sun).
So many people are saying “yeah it looks great now” and that freaks me out. I mean obviously people think it looks good or it wouldn’t be so popular…but I think it looks positively grotesque.
I’m part Maori (not that you can tell from looking at me) hence my wacky surname. Anyhoo, when I’m out in the sun, I tan naturally, easily, but only slightly. Just a touch, to hide any unhealthy shade to the paleness, but not turn me crispy. I likes that, I does.
Having said that, I stay inside mostly anyways, and so am fairly ghostly white. My Mum is of very pale euro-stock.
I think leathery tans, or those on their way to such, are quite yucky. But on some people, a darker tone can look darn good.
(With apologies to all those who are born tanned, and have little choice)
And alabaster skin can look doggone sexy sometimes too.
I work with a woman who has a perma-tan, year-round (okay, that was redundant), while I rarely tan. She just turned 32 and I just turned 29. When the subject of age came up at work, a co-worker said, “Oh my God, there’s only three years between the two of you??” So after taking her foot out of her mouth, she covered by saying that I just look really young. Also, when one guy in the office met “perma-tan”, he thought she was about 45! This particular conversation has me rethinking even the couple of months of tanning I do in the summer.
I would rather look my age, thank you.
“They have the internet on computers now.”–Homer J. Simpson
Skin cancer–not cool.
The “I look Like Queen Amidala Even When I’m Not Wearing Make-Up” look–very sexy. Nothing wrong with the Goth look either.
(Side note–one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen was a blond/cheerleader type with a tan. She was trying to “dress Goth”. A vampire with a tan!!!)
Is an appreciation of beauty a function of the human soul?
While a nice light rosy tan looks very nice, the price is pretty damn high.
When I was a kid, of course, we used to compete to see who could get the darkest. I now find that look pretty unattractive, but this summer was the first summer in 20 years when I had the opportunity to be in the sun very much, and the little bit of color it added to my face was very pleasant.
My sister was of the roasty-toasty school, and now, even though she is in excellent shape and still a lovely woman, her skin is unbelievably trashed. She takes much better care of it now, and she’s fortunate that she’s so pretty, but I’m sure if she had it to do over she wouldn’t have spent so much time cooking it.
My friend’s mum used to sit out in the yard tanning every possible day of the year. My friend pretty much followed her lead. All through high school my friend made fun of me for being pasty, but she stopped finding it funny when she had crow’s feet at 23. Ha!
Then her mum got skin cancer, thank God it got caught before it spread. But the first thing she did when she got home from her surgery was to “just relax” in the sun. In her bathing suit. Hello?
My friend is 26 now and most people take her for her mid-thirties. I can just imagine what she’ll look like at 40.
So, in short, my vote is for pasty!!
I think the question here is not the health issue. We all know how bad the sun is, blah blah blah, skin cancer, 20 years later, blah blah blah. The real question asked was does it look good NOW. And I repeat myself with, a tinge of color is great. Anything else, California, Florida, Alaska, wherever you may be, looks outdated and comical. You want to throw the women a frosty pink lipstick, and expect the fellas to take off their jacket to reveal one of those shirts that is almost like a muscle shirt, but isn’t sewn at all along the sides (anyone know what those were called?).
<table bgcolor=#ffffff><tr><td><img src=http://fathom.org/opalcat/hmmmmmm2.jpg align=left>I think any level of tan looks creepy. It just looks COOKED to me. Gross.
<–paper white skin here</td></tr></table>
I live in N. Ohio and we get less than 100 days of sun throughout the whole year. You can’t get a tan at all unless you fake it at a tanning salon. Everybody’s pasty, the morlock look. Anybody ever see any statistics for per capita skin cancer for let’s say Seattle vs SoCal ? I’m surprised anybody here develops it but it happens often, usually on the nose or face.
I don’t tan, I stroke! (apologies to Woody Allen). Which is OK here at 60° North Latitude, because even in the summer the UV is so low, it takes hours to get burned. Now, we’re heading into the Dark Month, with sunrise as late as 10:30 AM and sunset at 3:30 PM and a wimpy little sun in between; we’re talking Paste City. That’s probably why the tanning bed industry is so big here; you see tanning booths in video stores, laundromats, anywhere with a closet and a 110 outlet (“You want a tan with that yogurt?”). You can always spot an Electro-Tan, that homogenous George Hamilton orangy-brown all over; stands out like a sore thumb. I’ll stick with my mighty whitey look, thank you.
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
I think the points about melanoma are a little hyped up though. Also, being of Italian and Mexican descent(sp?) I have a naturally dark complexion. This combined with no family history(in a sun-lovin’ family) decrease my risk factors significantly for all three types of skin cancer: Basal and squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma. Mind you, I am in no way dismissing it as a risk nonetheless. The genes are working for me in another way as well, all of the older members of my family have fantastic looking skin, and a large portion of them are like me, living for the sun. I kind of think it may be because our skin(or at least mine) is a little on the oily side, so the sun seems to actually help our complexions maintain a balance. I know this is probably a better question for a dermatologist, but stmc62, does my line of reasoning hold water at all?
