I’ve suffered from paleness all my life. When I was young, my Aunt Judy told me “brown fat is prettier than white fat,” as we slathered ourselves with tropical oil and sunbathed down by the creek.
A few decades later, I know that cooking in the sun damages my cells and increases my risks for skin cancers so I now avoid sunbathing.
According to MedicineNet.com “Skin cancer is the most common form of human cancer. It is estimated that over 1 million new cases occur annually. The annual rates of all forms of skin cancer are increasing each year, representing a growing public concern. It has also been estimated that nearly half of all Americans who live to age 65 will develop skin cancer at least once.”
In Search Of The Perfect Fake Tan
I wore shorts once this summer. My family called me “mayonnaise legs” and put their sunglasses on to shield themselves from the glare. My red-skinned Indian husband called me “pale-face.”
So I began a quest in search of the perfect fake-tanner.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, why do you keep staring at me?”
“Because you were pale during hors de’oeuvres, coral during dinner, and tangerine by dessert.”
“Oh, it must be my new tanner.”
“What’s it called? Shades de’
The product’s ad promised that I’d get gradually darker; it didn’t explain that at midnight I’d turn into a pumpkin.
It hasn’t always been fashionable to be tanned. Back a few centuries, white was in. Women applied mercury and lead to their skin and even sipped arsenic to attain a lily-white complexion. Some even applied leeches to drain away the color. A tan was a sign that you were lower class and had to spend time outside working in the fields. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, when celebrities and millionaires began flocking to the
If you still crave that tanned look, without the skin cancer, there are dozens of over-the-counter products. Obviously, I’ve tried a few. My most recent experiment is Jergens natural glow.
