When I was a teenager (sometime during one of those prehistoric eras of which I forget the name but it ended in ... ozic), all the girls wanted to be blond and tanned. I qualified on the first, but I could never get that tan thing down. My pasty white skin either freckled or burned or both. In short, I looked like a speckled lobster. Not a good look.
Still, that didn't prevent me from from twenty years later paying good money (that I couldn't afford) to lie in a tanning bed and try to get that golden glow before my first trip to Hawaii. Once again, I didn't end up tanned. I did end up, however, with wrinkled, pruny skin. (Now, I can do that all on my own--no need to pay money for it.)
Fast forward another twenty years and I tried a self-tanner. I ended up orange. The healthy golden look I wanted, something with the delicate tinge of a freshly picked peach, had turned me into a giant pumpkin. What's more, I was streaked. Picture pumpkin-colored zebra stripes and you will have an unwanted visual in your mind.
Gem for the day: if you're pasty white, learn to live with it. Two hundred years ago, pasty white was in!
Ahhh, the joys of being pasty white.
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