Why is a tan considered optimal. I think pale skin is beautiful!

[Liuckle]

Not saying tanned isn't beautiful
I just find it interesting!

Because a light tan looks healthier (not talking fried in oil tan, orange sunbed tan or fake tan which all look awful). Pale skin can look healthy but usually just looks like someone is ill.

I'm pale, I don't look unwell 🤦🏻‍♀️. I'm Celtic stock, pale skin, blue eyes, medium brown/Auburn hair with a loose curl in it.

I've tried before having a "tan". I look odd 🤣

I've embraced my porcelain skin. I wear factor 50 in the sun, I don't tan naturally and fake tans no matter how expensive smell a bit funny to me.

Men also if my dating history is anything to go by, have never not liked me because I'm "pale", being clumsy and forgetful yes, but not pale 🤣

I think people with naturally very pale skin (the kind who get freckles) look lovely without a tan. If your skin is a little darker as a base level, it can look sallow and pasty without a bit of sun.

People typically want what they don't naturally have. The same way someone who's dark may want to be lighter (perhaps with lightening/brightening cream) because dark skin is 'one thing or the other', according to them.

The truth is that no colour is better or worse. It's a sad story that's been sold and people believe it. It's just as horrible to say that someone's natural pale colour looks bad/ill as it is to say that someone's natural dark colour looks bad.

If you had a tan, obviously now you can effectively colour yourself in, but previously if you had a tan it usually meant you had much time and money to get a tan.

In history it was desirable to be as pale as possible because then you had money and didn't have to work the land.

So basically trends usually are to show off in the "hey don't you wish you were me doing all this stuff with all this money". It's why Instagram exists.

I’m very very pale. Celtic porcelain skin with freckles, red hair and blue eyes. My daughter is the same.

ive had a lifetime of people commenting on my skin. How ill I look, calling me Casper, saying I should try tan, laughing at how pale I am. I dread summer and the inevitable comments.

But if I ever say anything back or tell people it upsets me I get told to lighten up, it’s just a joke.
But I really don’t get how in this day and age some people still think they have the right to comment on the way someone else looks. I’ve learnt to live with it but I don’t want my daughter to have to put up with it.

god knows what the answer is.

@BakedTattie you see we have the Irish ginge colouring and no one has ever said much about how pale we are.

I tried "tanning" one summer. Took hours of extremely protected sun bathing, flipping, moving straps, at best I was "dark straw", legs still dazzled headlights. So I gave up.

You could go all in and self tan orange just to prove a point!

Everyone on the planet it seems wants to be Mediterranean colour nowadays. To be fair it would be so much simpler if skin came in just one colour.

Because if you had a tan then it meant you had free time and money to get the tan - holidays abroad etc

I’m pale and Celtic too. Very prone to burning. Once when at the beach a very rude, very tanned woman walking behind me began pointing and staring at my legs and went on and on, loudly complaining to her companion about how white my skin was. Made me even more self conscious about it. Anyway, I stay out of the Sun in general and have much better, smoother skin than I otherwise would have.

I'm quite pale. It makes my face look fat and shows up my double chin. I look so much better with a tan. I look healthier and slimmer and in makes my blue eyes pop.

I find it really frustrating that for most of history being pale skinned was considered attractive and I, and my milky white limbs, live in the tiny fraction of time in which it’s seen as a negative thing.

I have come to accept though that the only recourse is to foist my porcelain skin on everyone every summer and really not care that’s it’s not fashionable. It’s hot, I’m middle aged and I’m wearing shorts regardless. I console myself, as I slather on the factor 50, than I may not be trendy but I at least won’t suffer from early sun damage, so there’s that. If anyone comments I tell them to piss off.

I'm very pale and whilst I definitely don't look unwell, being this pale means every blemish, broken capillary and imperfection shows up. I have to take very good care of my skin for it to get the kind of 'porcelain' vibe.

Darker skin is a lot more forgiving and in my view is a more effortless kind of beautiful. All skin is beautiful.

I think people who are naturally pale (i.e. don't tan easily) generally look good pale. They usually have a pinkish tinge which suits paleness.

Personally I'm someone who tans in the summer no matter how many attempts I make to take care - sun cream, wide brimmed hats etc etc. And I look vastly more healthy - my skin has a yellowish tinge rather than a pinkish one so I look sallow without a tan.

As others have said, pale skin used to be prized because it was a sign of wealth and not working outdoors. Then tanned skin was prized as a sign of holidaying abroad - especially when it was only for the rich. Iirc Chanel perpetrated the idea of the tan as fashionable. For what it's worth, I am also pale-skinned and have long given up trying to be brown or faking it.

Generally i think any skin tone can be very attractive, i am naturally fair and a bit freckley and happy with that. But when I get a bit of sun I go a nice golden colour and my eyes look bluer and my teeth whiter, it just gives me a nice 'glow'.

I go to great lengths to avoid getting any hint of a tan, I love pale skin.

I never tan. I remain pale all year.

I'd love to be either tanned or pale. Instead, I have the in-between look of corned beef. Stunning 🙄

I'm very pale and I don't look unwell at all. I really like my colouring now after years of hating it. Pale skin, very dark hair and blue-green eyes.

I don't tan, I just burn and I hate fake tan, it makes me feel grimy.

Yep. Whereas looking pale was fashionable in the time of Elizabeth the first as meant you were rich enough not to have to toil in the fields under the hot sun.

Some people have beautiful pale skin, i'm not one of them, i look ill. In winter it's make up, in summer a tan.

Going back in history, poor people worked outside and were browner, rich people lived and worked indoors and were paler, all the old portraits of the monied show pale people.

Then factories came along and poor people became pale, rich people could spend their greater leisure time out doors and browner became fashionable.

Or summat.

i have very sallow skin that tans easily as soon as the sun comes out, i love it, it makes me look better i think, during winter get comment i look ill. I don't sit out in it though, wear a hat and sunglasses plus factor 50 on my face and cover up in extreme heat. I do wear fake tan most of the time, this works body oil for legs is amazing, my fake tan is not orange, you can get some fab different tans now that are different levels and if done correctly can look fab. I also use body lotion with a hint of tan aswell, I love how a bit of colour helps boost my confidence. I think its done to look natural though some might disagree 😜

It is still the case in Japan, I believe that pale skin is considered more beautiful?