When I was young, tanning was quite a cultural craze and I grew up in the era of “sun worshippers.” In fact, if you weren’t tan, it could make you a target of ridicule or bullying. I heard the actress and comedian Kathy Griffin talk about being bullied as a child for being very pale, and she was asked if she put talcum powder on her legs to make them so white! I recall my fair skinned sister being bullied and called “tuna fish” or “mayonnaise” for her pale skin; I am also extremely pale and I was belittled for my white legs and urged to get a tan, as it would make me look “healthier.”
So women and girls back in the day, we tried everything to get a tan, and boy, did some of us suffer in the process. The pressure to tan began early in a girl’s life. Pre-teen girls in my school covered the snow banks with tinfoil and baked in the sun during the rare warm days in February, so they could get an early start and become tan by spring. When my family made annual summer trips to Lake George in the Adirondacks, we always lounged by the pool at our hotel and I prayed I would get some color, but I always got burnt to a crisp. I remember one especially bad burn that resulted in chills, fever and the skin on my arms and nose radiating fire, charred like a baked potato!
Then I grew into a young woman and the pressure intensified. I felt hurt and shame when an older man I thought I loved told me I had nice legs, but they were too white for his taste (I wore jeans the rest of that summer). All through college and my early working years, I purchased tube tops and short shorts and sun tan oil from Coppertone to Bain de Soleil to engage in the sun worship that was expected.
I desperately wanted to please, to be liked and accepted, to fit into mass culture. I didn’t have a strong enough sense of self to do what was best for me, to risk being too different. I would sometimes hear this phrase in my youth: “Beauty knows no pain.” In other words, to live up to a cultural standard of beauty, a woman needed to be willing to suffer by engaging in potentially harmful beauty rituals.
I have to confess, I tried to get rid of my pale skin and do what was expected of me, but I didn’t enjoy baking in the sun. I attempted to get fashionably tan, but I’d always burn painfully or if I did eventually tan, it wouldn’t be even. Then after a summer of spreading on the tanning oil, I noticed I developed a few dark spots on my stomach; I wasn’t sure what they were and that concerned me.
Still, I kept getting messages from culture that I needed to tan. Magazines were filled with images of bronze colored bodies wearing expensive bikinis, dripping in diamonds and gold jewelry, always pictured on a beautiful beach or a fancy yacht. The implication was that tanning made us younger, thinner, richer and more desirable.
What they didn’t tell us was that tanning can kill you.
I never heard much about skin cancer awareness when I was growing up. It took my Dad’s bouts with skin cancer to make me sit up and take notice about the dangers of tanning. My father has light eyes and paler skin like me (we’re of German and Dutch descent) and all those hours Dad spent working outdoors without sun protection took its toll on his skin. When I saw the bandages covering Dad’s face and other parts of his body, I vowed to never again give in to cultural pressures to be tan.
Now I embrace my pale skin, and I never let anyone shame me for simply being myself, someone with a lighter complexion. Fortunately, our culture seems to be catching up a bit, and now you hear a lot about the dangers of tanning beds and baking in the sun. However, we’re still crazed about bronzers and self tanners. As I strive to live a more natural, holistic life, I wonder about what kinds of chemicals are in all those supposedly harmless self tanners. Each summer, I say I’ll try a “tanning towel” to give my legs a little color, but I haven’t so far, because I’m sensitive and lots of self tanners have unpleasant odors.
If you’d like to raise your skin cancer awareness, Neutrogena has a website that offers a free self exam kit and more information about skin health:
http://www.chooseskinhealth.com
I believe it’s an act of radical self acceptance and authenticity to embrace your natural skin, whatever its color. For more on my journey to skin cancer awareness and why I won’t tan, read my article:
Why I Won’t Tan This Summer by Allison West Published on BeyondJane
As I walk down the sultry streets of my small town in New York’s Hudson Valley this summer, I’m aware that I’m a little different. In fact, I feel a little bit like a rebel of sorts. I feel like I’ve committed an outrageous act that doesn’t fit into the norm here.
What have I done that so goes against the grain of my sleepy little upstate community?
I refuse to tan.
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