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04 January 2006
I feel so pasty today! So tell me how you feel about tan-ness. Because I've really been wondering.
I'd much rather be tan. Maybe that's surprising, maybe not. I used to hit the booths a few times a week, maybe three, for about two years or so. But that's really bad and I knew it. We tried the Mystic tan a few times, and it's cool but damned expensive. So we found an Aveda self-tanner that works really well, but there's the cost of that, and the hassle of putting it on . . . so right now anyway, I'm pale. And I hate it. I'm a fucking sell-out, I like to be tan and find tan people more attractive almost always.
Having inherited my looks from the Irish side of the family, I don't tan, or even burn, so much as burst into flame. When I went to a nude beach in Florida, people were literally thrusting tubes of sunscreen at me as I walked past.
jonmc and I share a genetic heritage and the resultant skin color. Tan is beyond me; the most I can hope for is that light doesn't make an audible zing noise when it bounces off my radiantly white, white, paler than pale skin.
I get really resentful about "ew get a tan" comments...I hear that a lot in the summer. There's nothing wrong with my skin, it's just pale. No one goes around telling darker skinned people to get lighter, you know? But people seem to think it's fine to comment on my skin, which always gets my hackles up (I don't know where my hackles are exactly, but I do know that they get up sometimes).
I like it, actually. Knowing that tan-ness and/or a rich skin color is often associated with health ticks me off, though, because I'm the healthiest person I know. So once again I have to say, suck it, haters.
I'm pale, and I'm attracted to pale persons. Works out okay. My kids will probably be translucent.
Agreed that extreme tan = squicky. Is that the correct use of said term? Also (and hope not to offend) people who are prematurely old-looking due to sustained tanning = a bit squicky.
I used to tan quite well as a kid, but now I'm a bit like how jonmc describes. Except not quite that bad.
I am pale, I don't tan but go pink and it peels away to leave white underneath. Spray tan is very popular in this part of the world, but being tan doesn't suit my hair/eye tones.
The only kind of tan I really like is the little squares on the back of the hands from bike gloves, otherwise I can take it or leave it, I guess it depends on the complexion, yunno?
I do not understand tanning booths or self-tanner (sorry hggr, I do understand that you understand it) but I do understand that when it's mid-winter and the tracksuit and IROC set are bright orange like a fucking oompa-loompa I get a laugh. "What do you sleep in a fucking bag of Cheetos or something Mario? It's January, ass, we know that came out the can."
I also finds seeing veins under skin to be a turn on.
Word, but more in a pale English rose Jane Eyre way than in a Slim Goodbody we're learning science way.
Conversely I find in people who are not pale that I am more fond of a darker, duskier, rosier kind of look, except in those people with the nice cafe ole kinda deal, which is great, hybrid vigor and all that. In fact, really everyone is pretty cool and orange people are funny. It's another win-win, someone change my wiki page please.
acne scars and gin blossoms are cool, I don't like junkies so needle marks are out. HOWEVER, spray one of those bent over giant cellphone methadone spitters from around my corner with some Man Tan and it's hahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahaha I think I just peed a little.
I used to be nut-brown year-round when I was little. Now, I much prefer to be pale (all-over) and I hate my "geek tan" (arms, face, legs dark - torso & trunk light). I just don't have the time to sit around in the sun nude.
I suck. Nothing to be sorry about wino. I don't like the orange tan myself; these days I'd much rather get a good old fashioned gardening/mowing tan. And I'm not of the mind that pale = ugly. It can be quite attractive on some folks. Just not on me.
I kinda love cellulite (and I'm not just saying that so everyone will love me.) I am not overly fetishy, but I tend to prefer, as I've said many a time, the curvy girls, including those with the cellulite.
You don't suck at all tr33hggr, I actually know exactly how you feel, I just long ago adjusted my mental image of myself to that of a monkey trying to fuck a football, you follow?
I have the hands of a 90 year old woman...they're so gross and knotty and wrinkly-looking. I would always slather myself with sunscreen before going anywhere in the summer, but never thought to cover the backs of my hands. Now my skin is still pale and soft and smooth everywhere else, except for my hands, which have been tanned a zillion times. I think....Good Christ, is this what I would look like all over if I was one of those people who was always trying to get tan? Just looking at my hands gives me a reason for staying out of the sun, or at least not actively "trying" to tan.
I have 2 shades: white and red. If I get a "tan" it mostly just means that I get more/darker freckles, which drives me nuts because I constantly feel that my face looks dirty.
If I could do it all over again, I'd wear sun screen constantly and then I wouldn't have any freckles, just smooth milky Irish/Welsh skin.
Is it getting hot in here? Anyway, a few freckles are very sexy, especially in the right places.
I have an olive skin so, if I spend more than 5 minutes in the sun, I tan. Given that it has been our hottest summer on record and I have three weeks off work, I am currently tan all over with the exception of where my speedos cover. I think that tan looks good on some people, pale on others - there is no right answer. I would never consider a fake tan, though - but then, I have never lived anywhere where the climate prevents sun exposure all year 'round.
i burn, then it fades, then i burn again, then it fades...eventually i have color. I've been avoiding burning since my aunt had skin cancers removed--i've been burning my whole life and know i'm going to get them so don't want to make it worse.
and i have freckles all over my shoulders too--big ones.
I burn if I so much as look at the sun. In the winter, when I had a car, I would have a sunburn on my nose and cheeks from driving. Even when I wore spf 35.
So I wear sunscreen constantly. As a result my skin tone was described as "eggshell" the other day.
I tan pretty easily, but I have been indoors a lot more recently so I am at my lightest, which is apparently about #BC8161 in color hex code, according to photoshop.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
