Isn’t a tan a sign of damaged skin? AFAIK it’s the melanin in the skin cell relocating over the nucleaus in order to prevent further damage.
I sure like the appearance of a tanned girl, but every once in a while I realize that her skin is technically damaged. What gives?
I’ve always kinda assumed it has a connection to the perception of health. Tan=outdoors=exercize=healthy sorta equation. Not sure this really has a factual answer, though.
I agree! A tan is the bodies way of trying to protect itself from further damage
I have always questioned the irony in the so called healthy looking tanned skin. I have a couple of friends who are tan warriors. I can tell you that next to them I look pretty young.
Jim
Isn’t it just fashion? In many peoples opinion tans are not attractive (not talking just Goths). A tan is seen as uncomely in SEasian societies. IMO tans are not that attractive.
Similar thing to body mass. Big, busty, ample, curvaceous women used to be seen as attractive. Things have changed lately.
A tan wasn’t popular until movie days, when young stars travelled and laid out on beaches.
Before this time, a tan was seen as a bad thing. It meant you had to work outside, and thus were of lower caste.
I think a very light natural tan is attractive (though not being tanned is perfectly fine too). What I don’t enjoy seeing are people who look like walking toast.
This actually might be somewhat relevant. Tans make you look thinner and leaner. Body builders all use fake tans because it makes the curves of their muscles stand out. If you look at most “before and after” weight loss ads, one noticiable difference in the “after” photo is always a tan. When the fashionable female figure was more zaftig and soft, pale skin was more appropriate. Now that everyone wants more of a “hard body” look, tans are important.
And tans are still considered un-attractive in many parts of the world.
Very correct. Many women in Asian or Indian (as in India, not Native American) societies spend a considerable amount of money of “skin-whitening” or “lightening” concoctions. There was an article about a year or so ago that detailed just how big a business this type of thing had become in Japan.
I like the light tan ‘healthy glow’ that a few hours (spread over a few weeks) gives me. I don’t really “tan” like other people, but I get lots and lots of freckles, that give the illusion of a tan.
This website, while not exactly the most scholarly, has this to say…
A tan also hides blemishes, given the skin a more even look. Sunlight is believed to help acne, but whether it has any more effect than to make pimples less noticeable is unclear. And in fair-skinned people I suspect that any benefit would, ahem, pale against the increased risk of skin cancer.
Keep in mind, though, that the coloring Indian women are trying to achieve is something right around the color that Western white women are looking for at the pool or tanning salon…
At the end of last summer, my Chinese friends said, of my Chinese daughter:
“She so pretty, why you let her get so tan? She look like peasant!”
You should move to Brazil. Tans are normal, and considered sexy. Even better are the tan lines on Brazilian women. Mmmmmmmmmm.
Tans? Yuk. Give me pale and interesting any day.
I didn’t know that tan people were automatically uninteresting, or that pale people were automatically dazzling conversationalists that lead interesting lives. I guess you do learn something new every day.
Another person here that prefers pale skinned girls to tanned ones. It saddens me that so many otherwise attractive girls are destroying their skin by spending too much time in the sun or tanning booths.
I prefer a shade of skin that is appropriate to the race of the person. I really think Russian/Ukrainian/etc/North European women look best with pale skin. One “look” I absolutely cannot stand is the “California Beach Blonde” look that seems to be so popular among swimsuit models: bleached blond hair, blue eyes and a super-dark tan. Yuk. I think it looks ridiculous and unnatural.
You seem to have missed out on the geeky internet afficionado code, whereby, when presented with anything relating to beauty or sexuality, males must knowingly reply: “pah, give me a skinny/fat pale/mousy woman who’s interesting and smart, boy is that sexy!”
This makes you both knowing of things sexual and different from the ordinary crowd at the same time.