To totally BOYCOTT self tan??? I am sick of people 'comparing' their tans.

[WhateverGurrl]

I am fair skinned with a slight olive tone to it. My family are obsessed with having a tan, albeit a real one. They always go on and on about their stupid tans in the summer which annoys me greatly...what annoys me more is that for the last few years I have been using self tan regularly to get that 'perfect glow' the media and stupid others go on about all the time..so I can look acceptable and 'healthy'.
Well as of yesterday I am boycotting tanning. I am embracing my fair skin and aside from obviously getting the much important vitamin D into my system, that's where it stops. I feel like a bit of an idiot when women all around the world in India, Pakistan, China etc are desperate for white skin and are trying all means of ways to get it. I want to fully embrace it and be happy with it. Who's with me?

Anyone?

[TheSmallClanger]

I normally wear tights if I'm trying to look nice. I'm a bit blotchy and also usually have bruises from work/dog overexcitement/sports.

Fake tan is shit, it really is. No matter how expensive it is, it does not look natural and "bronze". It looks orange and leaves nasty streaks which ruin your clothes.

I find that Benefit do some good products for paler skin. I don't often wear foundation, but they have a couple of highlighter products that give a lovely pearly, dewy look. The name of them changes periodically. I think the one I've got is "Girl Meets Pearl".

We are so weird about skintones. In other parts of the world, freckles are considered the height of youthful cuteness, and grown women have them painted or tattooed on.

[McHappyPants2012]

A friend of mine is addicted to sun beds, as she is pregnant ATM she is using fake tan and it makes her look awful. I really don't think she even needs it because she has a lovely skin tone

[cinnamonnut]

I have never used fake tan before. I don't see any need for it at all. I'd look weird with a tan.

[squoosh]

Sunbeds are the worst of all. Firstly, they're bloody dangerous, secondly it gives people a weird apricot shade of tan which you can indentify as a sun bed tan from 20 paces.

No one thinks 'Oh they've must have just come back from Tahiti'.

[limitedperiodonly]

At last! A thread for people who hate fake tan. It's the first one I've ever seen.

It looks ridiculous. Especially when you apply it for holiday and start sweating it off in patches within an hour.

No one will look at your pale skin, except possibly to think how nice it is.

They will stare at your skewbald pit pony look.

[amybelle1990]

I have worked for a while for a surgeon that removes skin growths and malignancies- he always says there's no such thing as a healthy tan and that's the thought that goes with me whenever I see anyone with a real or fake tan.

The sad thing is most of these people look soooooooooooooo much better without it.

[Brodicea]

I am mega-white: I have a freckly face, arms and shoulders but otherwise white as a lily. I have shunned fake tan just because it looks awful, I'm very bad at applying it and also a bit odd on freckly ol' me. I am scared a spray tan on my freckles will just look weird.
But sometimes people make rude comments and/or think I am some sort of fey victorian lady ('are you an advert for yoghurt' / 'you look like a butterfly... a white one!' / 'Oh look her ladyship is going in the water!' / 'she's so white she's almost blue') so I have been tempted - instead I try and make the most of it by wearing bright and bold colours and patterns in the summer, maybe red lipstick, just to highlight the contrast.
I'm still a bit embarrassed sometimes, but i am just being true to my Irish / Scottish / Welsh heritage! ( I said to my OH that the pale-deriders were racist as they were judging me on the colour of my skin but he said that was balls )

[bronze]

Contrary to my name I am not bronze
I would like a bit of a tan onmy legs to cover the stretch marks and broken veins but not enough to fake it

[brighthair]

I'm pale and freckly. Don't use fake tan but I use a shimmer on my legs on nights out
Foundations I use - Almay in ivory, urban decay naked skin in 0.5, and missha perfect cover bb cream in %2313 (that's a Korean one)

I go with exfoliating and moisturising my body for healthy glowy skin rather than fake tan

[MrsRobertDuvallHasRosacea]

Yes I would just like a hint on my very long white legs.
However, I have bitten the bullet and said no more.....have to keep reminding myself of orange shins.

[squoosh]

The legs are the more difficult part of being pale as you want to avoid blotchy, corned beefy look.

Models and the like use Mac's face and body on their legs so that they have the glowy alabster thing going on from head to toe.

If you'd like a hint of colour to take the edge off the blue maybe something like Johnson's Holidas lotion is the answer.

[Spuddybean]

My parents are similar OP - totally obsessed with a tan. To the point they don't see a reason to go on holiday unless you get one. They don't understand Skiing hols, etc.

I have come back from beach hols (i am very pale and moley/freckly) to be told angrily that there was 'no point me even going away'.

When i was young they let me/encouraged no sun screen (and have only ever used under factor 8). So much so my skin is very damaged and i have to go for mole mapping at the hospital. They have showed me how damaged my skin is under the lights and it isn't pretty.

M&D still wont have it tho. Being tanned is really important apparently.

I am on Mat leave and mum calls daily to ask if i'm on the sun bed in the garden. When i tell her i don't own one she shouts about how i could be 'getting a colour'. She also keeps saying once i've had the baby we should be sunbathing all day. I'm hot as it is, the idea of laying in the sun in a bikini is horrendous.

I also don't fake tan because it just looks so obvious and the smell is vomitrocious.

I'm pale and proud, much to the disgust of my parents :)

[McHappyPants2012]

A different friend dd who is 5 does alot of dance competition so her dd has always got fake tan on. It looks awful :(

[Jenny70]

I am an Aussie, and probably the palest mum in the schoolyard! A few people talk tans (not to me, it seems pretty obvious I'm not into it), but honestly most of them look so orange to me, and personally I think it ages them.

Another Oz mum and I laugh that we automatically sit in the shade, even on mild day. But the upside is there is loads of room, most of the british folk etc are out in the sunshine.

[Minshu]

This is so refreshing - why shouldn't we like our own skin colour, no matter what that is?

I've had almost-angry comments from my Gran about me not having changed colour after being on holiday. She's Irish, and always wanted to tan instead of freckle. I don't freckle, just burn and then go white again. It's actually a bad thing, and even if it was, I would have no control over it!

[SoftKittyWarmKitty]

I'm very pale, in fact my legs are normally a lovely shade of white-blue which is so attractive when I'm wearing a skirt . Like others on here, if I forget to apply blusher I look ill, and on holiday once I got burnt despite wearing factor 50. My ex tanned easily and his step dad used to look me up and down when we returned from holiday and ask me if I'd actually gone to the same place as ex ha ha fucking ha.

When I was younger I stupidly used sunbeds, then graduated onto fake tan. Over the past few years I've tried loads. Last year I used Vita Liberata which was the only fake tan not to streak on me, and I quite liked the subtle orange olive look, but I can't pretend it looked natural. This year I haven't bothered at all and it's been quite liberating not to faff around with applying it every other night. My legs look sodding awful in a skirt though - think I frightened a few colleagues on the rare sunny days we've had . Oh well. I'm too old to care now.

[wasabipeanut]

YANBU but I don't think you are being that radical either. I think the orange ship has sailed - it certainly has among women of my acquaintance. I know very few oompa l

[wasabipeanut]

YANBU but I don't think you are being that radical either. I think the orange ship has sailed - it certainly has among women of my acquaintance. I know very few oompa loompas.

I can't be arsed with fake tan and I certainly can't be bothered laying sweating in the sun. Given that I have 3 DC's under 5 it's somewhat academIc anyway!

[limitedperiodonly]

spuddy DH is like your parents. Don't know why. His mother and brother aren't like it. Perhaps he gets it from his long-dead father who worked on a cruise ship

He has to go to the beach. If we're somewhere like Rome, has to have a hotel pool, and resents looking 'at churches and things because they're all the same' but really it's because he can't be in the sun.

After rows - he used to try to walk us down the sunny side of the street, refused a beach umbrella and sulked if it rained once during the holiday like he wanted his money back from God - he's not so bad.

I have an umbrella but he gets twitchy at the end of the day when he's cast in its shade. He's incensed by people who leave their own umbrellas up to cast shadows while having lunch. We've negotiated a beach arrival time of past 2pm. I'd prefer about 3 but he complains about 'being late'. How can you be late on holiday unless it's to the airport? He still tries to get there earlier and gets in a strop with breakfast places that are a bit slow to serve him.

He once also told me that my face wasn't going brown because I always had my nose in a book. I told him if I was expected to spend several hours on the beach I had to do something to stop me going mad and beating him to death with with his discarded beach umbrella.