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

[Liuckle]

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

I'm so sorry.

How are you now?

Money. It’s all money. People always reference how it used to be desirable to be pale (think lead skin make up etc) because it showed you didn’t work out under the sun. If you had a tan you were a poor worker. If you had pale in burned/untanned skin, you didn’t work and therefore were rich. Today, a tan suggests you have the money to be on holiday lapping up the st tropez sun.

It’s the suggestion of money that fashion follows.

I'm so pale (and with fair hair blue eyes) that if I go to the GP for something unrelated they have, on occasion, mentioned iron tablets or checking levels.

I have embraced my pale skin and think my legs look just fine if I keep them nicely exfoliated, toned (through exercise) and moisturised. I use SPF 50 so have no intention of tanning, and not really interested in fake tan.

I do get some light spattering of freckles across bridge of nose, even with spf, in the summer but they've grown fainter as I age and I don't dislike them anyway.

I’m pale and always fake tan in the summer. I look so so much better. I’m not talking TOWIE tanned, so no one would ever know I tan. I think it takes years off me and skin just looks better a bit darker. If you’ve got an overweight person on a beach in a bikini, they look drastically better if they are golden brown than pasty white.

I can't get my head around people deliberately doing something or faking something that can cause cancer

Fake will always look fake so apart from the cancer connection I don't get looking fake

Uncooked sausage! 🤣🤣

It's true that 'pale' looks different on different skin tones though. My skin is olive toned with no pink in it, but still looks unattractive in winter when pale. It just looks grey and sickly.

Personally, I think pale looks better with a bit of pink in it, as it warms up the tone and looks less corpse like.

Agree @WandaWonder. My Dad died of melanoma. He had the sort of skin that went brown very easily. I never saw him with sunburn. Now I inwardly cringe when I see people who are really tanned. It’s just so bad for the skin (melanoma aside, it ages people so much!) As for sunbeds- I can’t actually believe they’re still legal.

It's just my skin. I'm no more unhealthy/healthy because I'm pale
Honestly don't think about it apart from when I'm putting SPF on
If people think I look unwell and pasty that's their issue, it's my natural skin tone

FarTooHotForMe · Today 10:51

*I wish I’d stuck with pale skin when I was younger, 10 malignant melanomas later I’ve change my thinking that a tan looks or is healthy.
I'm so sorry.

How are you now?*

I am ok but need to be monitored for the rest of my life, I’ve had so many moles removed, skin grafts, skin flaps, lymphs out I’m amazed I have any skin left on my legs.

They're completely awful. One of those things future generations are going to look back at and wonder what the fuck we were doing.

The white lead and arsenic of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Although it has to be said, strictly limited sunbed use can be very useful in treating certain kinds of severe eczema and psoriasis.

I’m pale. As a kid I was teased at school for being pale and it left me feeling really rubbish about myself. Eg why are you so white?! You look like a ghost etc etc I do use fake tan now and I’m sure it’s a throwback to that insecurity.

On the plus side, since I never go in the sun as I burn so easily my skin is very smooth and unlined in my 40s. Some of the people from school who used to tease me and tanned obsessively using baby oil now have skin like chamois leather so I kinda feel like the last laugh is on them 🤣

There's pale and there's pale. Agree some can look great but I am green eyed and red haired and while I don't mind my pale skin on arms / face / torso my legs look almost grey / blue they are so pale. Like the flesh of the dead. Awful. I use 2 coats of vita liberata just to bring them up to white.

I too have the Celtic skin heritage, am freckly to a degree and I burn if the sun even winks at me. I remember my childhood playing on the beach all day in the summer then being chucked into cold water and vinegar baths. My brothers taking turns in 'peeling' me. I guess mum couldn't afford sunscreen if that was even a thing in the '60's ! My school friends would lie out in the sun at break time smeared with baby oil. I would just feel as if my brain had boiled. So I got used to avoiding the sun and anyway hate sunbathing and have never been able to fathom how people do it. I did get a nice tan on my legs one summer when a boyfriend had a motorbike and we were spinning around to beaches etc (where I stayed in the shade) but my legs tanned from the wind and intermittent exposure on the back of the bike. Now I live in the tropics it's all about covering up, the sun is so fierce. Sadly like @sliceofcakecupoftea and others I have blotchy surface veins etc and am very envious of the tanned legs other women have so effortlessly. However my skin does not look like old leather on my neck and face and I know it is better safe than sorry with the amount of skin cancer on the up....a little bit of skin sparkle in the evenings lifts my shoulders etc to a more flattering tone I find.

I’m pale, don’t tan and have never tried to get a tan. You’ll have to prize my fake tan out of my cold dead hands this time of year. I feel SO much better with my legs a light golden rather than blue-white.

I’m in my 40s, so grew up with a tan being desirable. It may be different for youngsters?

I detest my pale skin. I'm practically translucent. Veins show through my skin. I look and feel better with a light tan.

This thread illustrates how thoughtless people are with their comments. Why do they feel they can pass comment on another’s appearance?

I think people are commenting on their own appearances not other people’s, and what they themselves feel happy with. I am fair and freckled and nothing above has offended me.