h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am a pasty skinned Scottish person...and for a whole number of reasons this isn't my fault. I've never seen the fascination with people (espcially brits) trying to tan themselves up in those awful salons (which in Glasgow are mostly fronts for organised crime anyway, from what I can gather). I liked a nice pasty body as much as a tanned or any other colour going really...but there seems to be this weird kind of predjudice among white people to people who are ....well a bit whiter. I have had good freinds mock my whiteness....'well what other bloody colour can I be if it's bloody freezing all the time and I'm always covered up'? I have been known to reply.
Funnily enough I was in Singapore a few years back and a lovely young girl and her mum came up to me and comented on how lovely and pale I was....I felt justified after this to walk around displaying my pale frame proudly for all Singaporians to see....I got sun-stroke and had to spend a whole day in bed. Typical.

It's about being exotic. A lot of people in temperate countries like to stand out, so aim for tanned skin. In hot countries, however, most people are already tan, and so go for paler skin, because it's exotic to them.

When I was in secondary school, an Egpytian boy told me all about this. A chinese guy also said that in China, women are getting operations to make their eyes look more western. Compared to that, I'd say that being mocked for tanned skin is somewhat better.

At one pojnt, tanned skin was taboo, as it was a symbol of the working classes. The noble classes all aimed for pale skin to set themselves apart from the riff raff. Then some model got a tan, and suddenly it mean health rather than work. Hmmm.

I accepted quite some time ago that I am an English Rose and I don't tan, I just go red, peel and go white again. Now I embrace floaty dresses and big straw hats. Oh and lots of sun cream.

All your friends who go to the studios to get tanned, or spend hours in the sun, risk to get a melanom, and in any case, they will get many wrinkles

I neither tan nor burn... I just go a bit pink for an hour.

I have a very expensive skin tone, talored into its pale palour by hours and hours spent inside during the day and only going out whn its dark, and spending all my time in smokey pubs and bars and clubs, I wonder if its been worth all the effort

"Then some model got a tan, and suddenly it mean health rather than work. Hmmm."
Nearly. It was actually the rise in holidays abroad in sunny climates and the reduction of people working outside all the time (moving into factories and other indoor work). This meant that the working class was no longer so tanned, and only those who could afford to sail off into the sun for several weeks got tanned. Therefore, getting tanned was a status symbol which said you are rich enough to go and laze about on some foreign shore instead of working. This has persisted into current times. Obviously, now that the cost of sunny beech holidays has dropped to levels that many can afford (or so it seems) this has mixed the whole thing up since neither pale nor tanned is the preserve of either class.
Oh, wait a minute, we don;t have class anymore do we?

All they need do is replace all those office and factory strip lights with tanning lights and all us workers would be nicely tanned (at least on our faces and hands) and the monied lot would go back to being pale

Personally, I like the english rose pale look. Or the pale and interesting goth look.

And, of course, a tanned face nowadays indicates that you're a smoker who is banished to the great outdoors on sunny days, and gets a tan in 5-minute batches!

RF

As a half-chinese (half-caucasian) person I've always loved my nice tanned brown skin in the summer.

However in winter I go a nasty yellow, which I dont like...

I've never had to wear sun cream, just a bit of aftersun to stop my already dry skin drying out and flaking. The only time Ive ever sunburnt is when I was in Chile for 2 weeks in 40 degree heat and I wore mirrored sunglasses the whole time. The design of the sunglasses must have reflected sun onto my nose cos I had a lovely burnt bit down the middle of my middle of my nose and nowhere else.

Funnily enough I get my sun resistance from my white mother, who never burns, rather than my Chinese father, who burns in sun regularly!

Alastair Cooke quoted his Mother in Law who was a 'real Southern Belle', presumably around the 1950's, when her stock in phrase was 'take care you stay out of the sun'

Well thats whee the term "red neck" come from workers in the fields in the US getting burnt necks whereas the monied ladies wore hats.

Personally, I think the difference between very white people with deep or (more often) orange tans and those who with darker skins (who tan quickly) is glaringly obvious, and the former can look extremely tacky. It probably comes down to what looks more natural for the individual.

and then there are those who seem to just get lots of freckles.

I live in south Florida and am constantly amazed at the thriving business our many tanning salons do. I can understand the people who want to look tan without risking damage from the sun going for the spray-on tans. What blows my mind is that so *many* people are going to tanning booths, which are apparently as dangerous, if not more so, than sun exposure. Why???? We have nice beaches, plenty of pools and parks, and the weather is almost always such that you can go outside for half an hour and start a good sunburn.

Ahh, but you can't go sunbathing unless you already have a tan. People always start going to tanning salons when summer is approaching so they will be nice and brown for laying on the beach. I like a natural tan, but usually a fake one just looks wrong on the person. Nothing wrong with being pale methinks. And you don't end up with wrinkly 30 year olds. Those people that have a sunbed in their house scares me.

When I was in asia I saw a lot of billboards for skin bleaching cremes to get nice white skin. Like someone said, it's about being exotic.

**has to read that twice because he thought the last word was 'erotic'**

B

Just remember trying to get a tan is the first stage, the second stage is realising you now look like a leather handbag.

Is that a look to go for?

I guess for some of the people here it *would* be the look to go for, Sorrel. As long as the Louis Vuitton logo was tattooed all over too. Hadn't thought about that part of it.

Thats nasty! Bet someone would want to look like that though.

Bizarrely, that could just work...I remember when young, there was a phenomenom amongst girls who had striey tans caused by exposure to the sunwhilst wearing a onepiece stripey Speedo swimsuit. This was not an intentional look, I hasten to add - it only became apparent when later wearing a bikini.

Now, if you could find out how to get that Burberry tan... Every chav will want one!

RF