http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/05/22/why_young_white_women_risk_cancer_to_be_tan_.html The article says that white women are merely trying to get a "glow", or to look more healthy. I've seen some white women go completely overboard with their tanning, and end up resembling blackface minstrel actors. Here's some prime examples; However, is there something more psychological going on? I have medium-toned skin (like my avatar), and white women have constantly complimented me on how "beautiful" my skin is. I'm starting to believe all this tanning is in an effort to resemble darker people. No different than darker women bleaching their skin and getting surgeries to look more "European" or mixed-race. The standard of beauty has shifted over the last few years, and a lot of darker women are now considered attractive or sought after. White women simply can't compete, so they run to the tanning salons to make their skin darker. When they come out lobster, they tan more and more until their skin looks maroon and unnatural like those pictures above. That's my opinion. What do others on the forum think?
My instinct on tanning being considered fashionable wouldn't be that it's about trying to resemble naturally darker skinned people but due to the growth in international travel over the past few decades meaning the rich and successful started spending a lot of time in sunnier climes and thus would be tanned. The rest of us, consciously or not, will tend to seek to emulate the successful, hence the fashion for tanning. Ironically, I gather there is a big market in places like India for skin-lightening (with it's own health risks at the extreme end), driven by similar cultural factors meaning lighter skinned people are (or are seen as) more successful.
In India, people with lighter skin are viewed as more attractive/successful. Wouldn't that also be the case for women (and men) with tanning? I mean, if you had a woman or man who had a natural year round tan, wouldn't that person be deemed more attractive/successful than people who don't have that skin color?
Tanning is among the dumbest things I have ever seen catch on in pop culture. The idea of paying money to artificially darken your skin (and in a manner that never looks natural) is flat out stupid. People are largely pathetic and stupid.
Well the health risks are pretty severe. We're starting to see girls as young as 20 with melanoma and other skin cancers. I just have to wonder; Why is having darker skin so important to young white women? Are they trying to look like this?
It is generally considered [ by europeans ] that tanned or brown skin is attractive. I'm guessing that with all of the race issues dealt with over the years has led one to see the true artistic beauty in colour of different ppl. Clearly it's more than colour but in general the natural curves of the body are accentuated when one is 'brown'. Features are less distinguished with full white or black so to speak, it's just a logical shift away from the blatant racism we have had to endure by whites over the last 400 years.
Perhaps this stems from feeling a lack of control over one's life. They can't control anything except their look so they obsess with it to the point of extremism, much like an eating disorder.
Let's not stop with tanning. Whites are the largest group doing butt implants and lip enlargements as well.
Do you mean there should be a fashion for tanning in India too? I don't think so because they won't have the natural link between rich/successful people and being tanned that I believe in Europe comes from those people tending to have the opportunity for more holidays in sunnier climates. Rich/successful Indians won't have the same distinction since they all live in a much more relatively sunny area anyway and tanning also typically won't have as significant a visual difference. In India, I suspect their cultural symbols of success will be influenced by the caste system, British colonisation and Western media.
Wow those girls need to get out of the sun, they're getting crispy! I saw something about this on a TV program once, a woman who was obsessed with tanning. Apparently tanning releases some feel good hormones in the brain which may have been a factor. They finally got it through her head that what she was doing was not only ruining her skin (giving her wrinkly and leathery crocodile skin) but putting her at serious risk for skin cancer. She finally stopped and a year later she looked back at old photos where she had originally thought she looked beautiful and felt appalled. Her tan had faded only a small amount in that entire year as well.
