This summer I am a woman without color. And I plan to stay this way, right through August.
Six bronze ages ago I decided not to chase the sun for an elusive tan and to be happy with the alabaster skin I was born with. Trust me, mine is not that enviable, creamy, silken complexion you see on Paris runway models or in skin cream commercials. My natural hue is one of someone with stomach flu.
“Ashen,” my husband, Walter, calls it. “The palest you’ve got” is what I tell the woman at the cosmetics counter when I’m buying foundation. “Kabuki” was what my friend Tom nicknamed me.
My paleness has landed me seats on a train and awarded me a great deal of unnecessary sympathy.
“Aw, honey, you look so pale,” total strangers coo on hot days. “Are you going to faint?” gentlemen inquire in crowded elevators.
I have not always been a woman without melanin in her system. As a teenager I thought the biggest accomplishment of summer was to have tan lines.
So I envied the lifeguards. I strove for those deep, glorious tattoo-like markings that proved you had passed enough time outdoors for your skin to burn.
In high school my girlfriends and I would mix iodine with baby oil and fry ourselves. On cloudy days we would resort to the sunlamp my parents kept in the basement.
On weekends my sisters and I would lie prone and bake in the back yard on lounge chairs, oblivious to the taunts of my brothers. As our skin cooked we read magazines and discussed soap operas and hairstyles. It’s a wonder all of us ended up with master’s degrees.
In college I heard the advice, “Tan fat is better than white fat,” and became determined to appear 5 pounds slimmer just because my arms were brown.
Being a sun goddess was no easy feat at Northwestern University, where I arranged my spring quarter classes for the morning so I could spend the afternoons with a sun reflector on the roof of my friend Susan’s dormitory. I was convinced I looked and felt better tan, and positioned myself whenever possible to thrust my face towards the sun-eyes closed-to catch rays.
I wasn’t all that deep.
Later I lived in apartment buildings with sun roofs. I ate lunch outside from May until October. The threat of skin cancer didn’t faze me. I was tan, and I was happy. Or so I thought. Until a man I hardly knew but respected remarked, “To me a dark tan is a signal that your mind is on hold.” Those were not signals I wanted to give. It was the first of many chinks in my bronze armor.
Shortly after that I moved to Texas, a sunbather’s dream. The Texas sun was hot enough for sunbathing from February through October. Ah, to be tan almost year ’round, imagine! Then I noticed what all the women my age and older looked like in the oppressive sunshine: They didn’t look good. They were tan, all right, all of them, but I had purses in better shape.
My tan obsession was fading. I started to believe that the only things that should be consistently sun-kissed are oranges.
So I tried one of those self-tanning milk creams. And I learned immediately that the first mistake is to experiment on the face instead of the inside of the knee.
I no longer envy a woman with a dark suntan. To me it’s a sign that either she does not get claustrophobia in a tanning booth, has found the perfect brand of self-tanning gel or has the time to sit on the beach.
It also means to me that she has swallowed the marketing ploy that there was something about her original skin color that needed changing for her to look good. And that one I don’t buy.
Sure, I may look healthier with a little sun on my face, but I can wear blush and drink a lot of hot coffee and get the same effect.
I am the way I am. I am who I am. I don’t need to change my skin every summer just to feel OK. Go ahead and call me “Kabuki” if you want. I don’t mind at all. Just don’t expect any tan lines from me in return.
