Tan Lines

On embracing the skin you're in!

Okay ladies, let’s talk about insecurities and trying to fight against them with all our might.

This weekend I wanted to find some new recipes and workout inspo, and I hate to say it but TikTok is such a good source for food ideas and getting honest reviews of gym leggings. I appreciate every single person that does a squat test, they really are a pure example of not all heroes wear capes.

While aimlessly scrolling through the For You section (I really need to delete this app again - the hours I have lost!!), I came across a video of influencer Olivia Neill sharing a makeup tutorial she’s been doing recently to help her embrace her naturally porcelain skin. Given the fact that I really don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with influencers these days because it’s not the best for my mentals, the last time I saw Olivia she was blonde and tanned. I don’t think I have ever seen her without a bronzy glow before.

The algorithm must have caught me because as I scrolled, I saw more and more videos from girls declaring that they were going to put down their tanning mitts and celebrate their natural fair skin tone, following in Olivia’s footsteps.

@olivianeillthe makeup ive been doing to help me embrace my pale skin dis winterrrrrr- lets see how long it lasts x

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I naturally have very pale skin, and I completely understand the insecurity that comes with this. First, there’s the comments along the lines of “are you ill?”, or posing for a photograph next to someone who tells you that you make them feel better because ‘at least they’re not as pale as you!’. I consistently fake tanned between the years of 2018 - 2023 (yes, even in lockdown when nobody would see me); I would tell myself I looked like Caspar the Friendly Ghost if I dared venture out without. I had an expectation that if I went out looking pale, others would perceive me differently, maybe treat me differently. I wouldn’t be as aesthetically pleasing if I was pasty. Of course, this is all just lies my insecurity told me. Imagine the worst celebrity possible reading you a CBeebies Bedtime Story. That’s insecurity voicing your inner monologue. Get out of my house!

The beauty standard I frequently see puts women with a sun kissed glow on a pedestal. At first, it was the likes of beach babe Gigi Hadid, the Kardashians or the Victoria’s Secret Angels. When I was at uni, Molly-Mae Hague and Jess Hunt were the inspiration, with the former even owning her own fake tan brand. The thing about tanning is it’s so accessible - grab a bottle from Boots, go home, sleep on it, wake up and wash off. You don’t have to go to the salon, it’s not permanent, it’s not an expensive investment.

Then there’s the whole idea that this is only our beauty standard. The concept of what is beautiful differs from place to place, and time to time. The fact that a skin colour could be a trend is absurd in the first place — the world we live in and the pressures we have learnt to inflict on ourselves will never cease to astound me. We only have to look at the history of tanning to understand that beauty standards, particularly in relation to tanning, are ever changing. I came across Jessica DeFino’s publication, and she has a super clear explanation as to why so many of us love a tan these days -

For a long time, pale skin was considered the height of beauty. And that was because the working class was working outside. Having a tan meant you were poor, you were doing backbreaking work in the sun. Aristocrats were inside, not getting sun, and were super pale. Paleness was a signifier of wealth and that’s why it was popular. People would paint and powder their skin to be ghostly white, because that signified wealth.

We see this all change after the Industrial Revolution … With factories, the working class — the poor — are working inside now. They're pale. They are not seeing the sun because they're working from morning to night. And if you were wealthy, you had the time and money to go on vacation and lay out in the sun … now being tan was the height of beauty, because it signified being a member of the leisure class. Coco Chanel in particular popularized the tan in the 1920s.

We're still seeing that today. People are tanning, people are self-tanning. Tanned skin is held up as this paragon of beauty, and it is a class performance. We’ve drifted away from its roots — we don't really recognize what we're doing anymore — but that is 100% where it stemmed from.

- From Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes.

So, there is a historic reasoning for our obsession with tanned skin. Jessica goes into further detail about the racist/classist implications of this in her piece, which I urge you to read. It appears just like everything else - spaghetti straps, silver jewellery, skinny jeans - tanning trends are cyclical.

Jacqueline Kilikita from Refinery29 highlights that even the phrases we use to describe a tan are indicative of our preference for it: ‘From "sun-kissed skin" to a "healthy glow", the way we talk about being tanned is proof enough that we romanticise the idea of it.’ Partner this with the implication that being pale makes you look ‘sickly’, ‘ghostly’ and ‘pasty’. Is it any wonder that pale girls feel self-conscious about their complexions?!

Here’s the thing, though - why do we wait for celebrities and influencers to permit us to embrace our natural features? We spend so long morphing ourselves into every shape, every colour, every… whatever else, that we lose the aspects of us that make us individuals.

This isn’t to say “don’t change anything about yourself if you don’t like it”, but more to say you don’t have to change something about yourself just because society is telling you it’s not in right now.

I put my tanning mitt down at the start of the year because I couldn’t be bothered to be sticky anymore. It’s as simple as that — and the fact that it would always turn my sheets green. Also, I just feel too lazy to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I put a layer of fake tan on when I went on holiday because I still felt too self-conscious to walk around in swimwear being as pale as I am, especially as I don’t even catch a natural tan from the sun. I also tanned before I went to the Eras Tour, because I wanted to look my “best”. Both times, I used fake tan as a way to boost my confidence. I could argue that this was for my own benefit, but truthfully I know that it was because if I didn’t wear tan, I thought others would look at me and think I looked strange or unwell. When the tan wore off, I felt even worse about my complexion than I did in the first place. I got used to the “healthy glow”, and when it finally washed off (after a bizarre period of looking like tiger bread, of course), seeing my natural skin tone was almost a bit of a shock. I felt uncomfortable with it, I didn’t like it, I felt washed out and like everyone could tell that I looked different. In reality, I don’t think anyone did. It wasn’t the fact that I was tanned that meant I enjoyed my holiday or going to the Eras Tour, but the people I was with, the memories I was making, the fun I was having.

Learning to embrace my skin tone is an ongoing process. I’ll be honest, it’s not like this is the worst thing in the world. I fully realise that there are much bigger problems to have. What was an issue, however, was the fact that for at least three years, there was not a week that I would go out without a layer of tan on. It’s one thing putting on a bit of fake tan, it’s another feeling like your world will implode if people see you without it.

I think if Olivia Neill is encouraging her audience to put down their tanning bottles and embrace the skin they’re in, that can only be a good thing. This goes for all skin tones, by the way, not just those with fair skin. I know that people of all skin tones feel insecurity surrounding it. In general, the message to learn what works with you, what best compliments you, this whole colour test thing that I need to learn more about because I don’t understand it yet — it’s all about working with what we’ve got! I hate to sound like your Mum, but there is only one of you. The world would be no fun if we all looked the same, and sometimes the influx of social media trends makes it feel like that's the way we’re heading. I’ve said it before, but the race for hyper-perfection doesn’t have a finish line. We may as well all give up now, before we burn ourselves out.

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