To think that some people need to stop being competitive about getting a tan?

[IAmNotAmused]

It's embarassing seriously. All I've ever known from friends and family as I grew up was the whole 'I'm browner than you!' 'I tan better than you!' etc etc

I just find it really funny. Said family and friends now look worse for all that sun. I'm white (light olive toned skin) and am frankly tired of people always making 'pale and pasty' comments to me especially in the winter. White people are this colour for a reason, i.e, we live in europe where it is colder than the rest of the world. I've also noticed how people go on holiday and are so desperate to get a tan they spend most of the holiday roasting themselves in the sun.

rant over. Anyone else not too impressed with people's desperation to get a tan?

I am pale skinned (lets be honest, blue/white/translucent coloured), red haired, green eyed.

We live abroad and i am a SAHM. DCs spend their days playing outside under the terrace so i could, if i wanted to, sit in the sun all day, week after week, month after month. But i don't.

Visiters spend three days sat in my garden glued to our sunlougers (or should that be shade loungers), burn themselves then do the blimmin arm test to show off their tans. Never occurs to them i choose NOT to tan

I'm very pale, and I do get pissed off at people who make jokey comments about my porcelain legs. On the other hand, teenage DS1, who is never knowingly complimentary, is always surprised when people he assumed were much older turn out to be the same age as me. I don't have a particularly youthful demeanour, but at least the Factor 30 is doing something for me.

Avon do a great natural looking fake tan, I really meant I hate the tango look, not fake tan per se

I too have had comments about comiing back from holiday as pale as I left.

But the nice lady who gave me a massage on the beach in Bali gave me an extra 5 minuites because of my 'Beautiful white skin'.

Being competitive about a tan is very 1989.

Spent my life hating my Scottish blue-white skin, until my Mexican friend (with gorgeous skin) told me how much she'd love to be my colour. Made me think about it in a whole new light. Now I'm obsessive about SPF, and I make an effort to cultivate the whole pale-and-exotic look. And totally agree on the younger-looking thing. I'm 34, and I have no crows feet - unlike my friends who tanned through their teens and twenties, and now look significantly older than me.

WhatWouldJoanJettDo

I have Scottish ancestry on my mum's side and Irish on both, I feel your blueness.

Honestly? I have major skin envy for anyone who's skin is different than mine.

Where its the celtic pure white, or easily browned skin, olive, asian, black... I have envy.

I gave up on the tan competitions years ago when it became apparent that fake tan DOES NOT WORK on my shins (and bacon isn't a good look) and that real sun burns me quick, leaves me quivering for 24 hr before my skin returns to blue again. I have freckles and moles, I would prefer not to get skin cancer.

I've learned to love myself (even through the envy) and my blotchy, moley, uneven skin!

YANBU op even if I would love to at least attain a sun kissed glow that doesn't wash off or streak.

Another one here that just has to look at the sun to tan quite dark.

Have just returned from Turkey just under 2 weeks ago and the weather wasn't brilliant, but to look at me you'd think i had been out in the sun 12 hours a day for the whole 7 days......this so wasn't the case.

It was great to come back to the heatwave. It meant that i could spend time doing the garden.

I love to spend time outdoors, so if its not cold or wet will continue to do so.

I have found the older i get the darker and more quickly i tan and i do look better with colour though.
Its what my skin does naturally so am not going to avoid the sun just because others might not like it!

yanbu, although i do the opposite... i wonder if i can find anyone paler