Tour of the Tan
As a sophomore in high school, I tried not to stare at Maggie in English class, but on Mondays and Tuesdays, all bets were off. Those were evidently Maggie’s exfoliation days, after a weekend during which she had generously applied gobs of self-tanner to her face. Maggie spent the entirety of those classes peeling, pecking, and occasionally swabbing the scratches she self-inflicted as she removed the thick layer of her self-tanner. I cannot recall much about the novels we read like My Antonia and The Scarlet Letter, but I remember everything about Maggie’s splotchy face.
Over the last few decades, the faux tan has seen significant improvement.
Faux tan products and services today offer a vast array of options and price points. However, 1996 was still a dark age for the fake tan, a dark orange age to be specific.
Self-tanning “lotions” then seemed to be selling something they could not actually deliver. Their bottles and tubes promised an even layer of colour somewhere between a cappuccino and a cinnamon stick. What they actually served was a streaky mess whose tell-tale signs included the painted paws of their artists. They also smelled like rotting fish, due to the DHA, or dihydroxyacetone, the active ingredient in any faux tan product.
The discovery of this skin-changing chemical is fascinating. In the 1950s, Eva Wittgenstein, a medical researcher, observed the medicine she was using to treat children with a metabolic disorder would stain their skin, but not their clothes. The chemical was repurposed for self-tanning products, but the lotions and creams still cast fair skin in an orangey hue. Eventually, chemists struck the right formula, so that the DHA that is spritzed and smeared on today interacts with more layers of the skin versus just the surface layer, delivering more of the desired baked potato effect.
The professionally administered spray tan is still a relatively new service. The company Fantasy Tan claims to have pioneered the spray tan in 1997, with Mystic Tan (a division of Sunless Inc.) following on their heels, and professional Jimmy Coco making a splash with celebrities who heard about his mobile spray tan kit that launched in 2003.
“The discovery of this skin-changing chemical is fascinating. In the 1950s, Eva Wittgenstein, a medical researcher, observed the medicine she was using to treat children with a metabolic disorder would stain their skin, but not their clothes.”
However, in the 1980s and early 1990s, if you were looking for a way to achieve the Malibu Barbie and Ken complexion, tanning booths offered a quick trip to the tropics. Tanning beds were effectively preemptive coffins for those who spent too much time under their UV rays.
It was not uncommon to hear our homeroom teacher Mrs. Clark barking, “Stay away from the cancer beds, girls!” And yet, the fear of showing up for a winter dance at our school in northeastern Ohio or returning from spring break still looking pasty white was more fearsome a thought, apparently, than the threat of skin cancer. My peers, mostly white at our all-girls Catholic high school, bought tanning packages and bragged about their bliss under the bulbs. White lines stretched from the edge of their eyes to their ears; they were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. They might get wrinkles--or worse--someday, but in the meantime, at least they would not scorch their retinas.
“White lines stretched from the edge of their eyes to their ears; they were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old.”
My Irish skin, fair and freckled, would not submit itself to a tanning bed until I was in my early 20s, preparing to wear a strapless wedding gown. During my lunch breaks from work, I popped into a salon called Shades and returned to my office smelling of cocoa butter. Shades has since closed and is now occupied by Wave n’ Pave Tattoo. It was only then that I understood what all of my high schoolmates had claimed about the “addictiveness” of tanning: the allure of the tropical smells, the warm light against the dull gray of the winter months, and the promise of life without tan lines. It was a fairly affordable vibe.
Health Canada and the Surgeon General of the U.S. have done their due diligence to communicate the risks of the sun’s UV exposure, but tanning booths are not much better. Among high school students in the U.S., tanning has declined in recent years but has not ceased entirely. According to a 2022 IBIS report, tanning beds are still a $3B industry in the U.S. In 2019, 8.4% of white female high school students reported that they tanned indoors, according to The American Dermatology Association. In Canada, some provinces have taken a step beyond communicating the risks, going so far as to restrict the use of tanning beds for minors.
In preparation for a beach vacation last year, I tried a salon spray tan for the first time. The experience was uncomfortable, what with getting stripped down to my birthday suit in a shower so that a stranger could hose me with cold chemicals. The results were an even coverage of faux tan that lasted for a good two weeks. My muscles looked more defined and I did not spend the week at the beach treating my body like a rotisserie chicken that needed to be turned regularly under the sun. My children, however, were appalled by the even colour of my face, and truth be told, I also found the effect a touch alienating, and expensive. Further, I learned that spray tans may be the most dangerous of all faux tans because of the chance of inhaling the DHA. This gives me pause when using a bottle of Tanologist Express Tan at home, a holy grail of a product for less than $20, though I generally spray this into a mitt and rub it on my skin.
In addition to safety, this tour through the fake bake has caused me to interrogate another part of myself. In my hot pursuit of a more melanated look, I have to wonder if there is some self-loathing I need to further examine. Why do we value the look of baked skin? When did bronzed skin become so desirable? While Coco Chanel is credited with popularizing the tan after overindulging in the Mediterranean sun, those women now defining 21st-century beauty are patched, glossed, and airbrushed to whatever shade a brand or publication desires, adding yet another impossible aesthetic standard for women to chase.
The women now defining 21st-century beauty are patched, glossed, and airbrushed to whatever shade a brand or publication desires, adding yet another impossible aesthetic standard for women to chase.
Being comfortable in one’s skin should not be a privilege, but we know far too well that it often is.
I think back to Maggie in 10th grade English and those same feelings of discomfort rise again in me. I now teach 10th grade and each day I bear witness to students whom every day I want to tell they are enough--full stop. Nearly thirty years have passed and our impossible beauty standards of year-round tan remain, with Kim Kardashian leading the charge. At least many of the products have become a little more natural-looking.
Cultivating confidence, however, no matter what skin we’re in will always be an inside job.
Kendra Stanton Lee is high school teacher and writer in Boston.