Pale is Cool

I was up in the Washington D.C. area visiting my parents recently and accompanied my Mom to her standing nail appointment at her salon. She introduced me to the man who performs magic with her fingertips as “her other daughter, from Texas” (insert guilt here for not visiting as much as my sister who had apparently already met this V.I.P), to which he responded, “Texas? Why aren’t you tan?”

Throughout the years I have sometimes been asked this rude question while traveling and a local finds out where I live. My last several hometowns have been Houston, Phoenix, and Fort Lauderdale – all places known for their abundance of sun. I love the sun and the outdoors and almost everything that goes with them. The additional factors here are that I have fair skin, and a brain.

I inherited my father’s skin tone which tans eventually, but is more likely to burn within the first five minutes of being outside. I recall living in the mountains of Colorado when I was a kid and the ghastly sun bubbles I would find on my cheeks after being in the summer sun for so long with minimal SPF at maximum altitudes.

Too much sun exposure causes horrible things to happen to your skin, each worse than the last: Sun spots. Sun blisters. Wrinkles. Cancer. Having lived in these places I have seen how horrible this damage can be. I have friends who were cursed with preventable skin cancer before they turned 30. Because of all these things, I put SPF 85 on my face every time I know I’ll be outside more than 10 minutes.

We know more now than we did back then. It is challenging to buy a skin product nowadays that does not carry some amount of SPF in the bottle. Which is a great reminder – put it on every time you leave the house.

I won’t tell you that I no longer want a deep golden tan reminiscent of my lifeguarding summers in high school. I do. I feel more self-confident and healthy with a tan, even if the opposite is true. And to combat this, I can say from personal experience that there are some great self-tanning sprays and lotions available on the market. They may take some trial and error to find the one you prefer, but they are excellent for preventing the pale skin blindness of those around you.

If you have embraced the pale skin lifestyle, I envy you. Famous women like Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Hathaway and Katy Perry are doing a great job of making pale “cool” and I hope that trend along with the healthy- and green- movements continues.

Oh, and my answer to my Mom’s nail technician? “That’s because I prefer to have healthy skin.”