Friday, May 30, 2008

The Perfect Tan

With Summer just around the corner, many people are thinking about getting a tan.

You’d never know it to look at me now, but I use to be a total tanning freak.

Living in Florida for almost 20 years, my life existed for maintaining the perfect tan.

I have the type of skin that tans very quickly, but unfortunately fades just as fast. So in order for me to sustain a golden bronze-like color…I had to work at it.

The day that tanning salons began to open, I thought they were the greatest things to be invented since penicillin. During Florida’s rainy season, when I wasn’t unable to get to the beach to soak up the sun’s natural rays…I was at the salon, catching a few artificial UVA’s from a tanning bed.

(I mean, god forbid I lose one shade of color!!)

I even tried using these special tanning pills that you could take orally, and within a few days my entire body would turn the most beautiful and natural shade of CARROT.

(which included the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands)

I looked like a freak of nature.

Eventually I think people stopped using them, because they realized…“It’s not that easy being ORANGE.”

Finally, the idea that I was totally ruining my skin by constantly exposing it to the sun’s rays, dawned on me. However, I was still not willing to accept the fact that my natural skin color was a paler shade of TOOTHPASTE. So I decide to enhance it with self-tanning lotion.

WELL….

I don’t know if you remember when these lotions first came out…but they all made your skin look like a RUSTY FENCE. Since then, they’ve improved dramatically, and actually look quite natural.

Usually when summertime approaches, I get all psyched and will start using a self-tanning lotion just to give my skin a little color, but by mid-July I get so tired of reapplying it every couple of days… that I just say, “To hell with it” and go back to my natural color.

Recently, they’ve come out with an ingenious way of spraying a tan on. And from what I’ve seen on several people…it looks REALLY good.

However for me…I think my tanning days are over.

Gone are my days looking like Miami Vice…with my Don Johnson suit, blonde sun-streaked hair, and perfect tan…

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!