The above came up in another thread, where some people want a darker skin color than they have or what they get without any specific effort.
Also, there are people who want a lighter skin color than they have, so they follow dermatologists’ recommendations to avoid any sun exposure, dress like conservative women in the KSA, and/or use skin whitening creams.
There seemed to be perceived social status reasons, but do they make any sense? Do people tanning for darker skin color want to look like farm workers, and do people trying to lighten their skin color want to look as if they never get out?
Caveat - this all refers to the people in Western Europe and Americans of Western European Ancestry.
Back when the people who labored outside were poor, low status, or in various levels of servitude and slavery, tanned skin was an indication of an low status, and upper classes avoided the sun. Having pale skin was an indication that you did not have to engage in physical labor for a living.
However, at the end on the 19th century, the masses of low income, low status people that the upper class saw were factory workers and servants, all who worked indoors or in crowded urban areas. So these people had pale skin because of lack of exposure to the sun and because of unhealthy lifestyles caused by their low incomes. At the same time, “healthy lifestyles” became (and remained) increasingly popular among the monied classes, as did a leaner physique. Outdoor exercise and sunbathing became popular pastimes for people who had time and leisure to spend outdoors and to travel to places like parks and beaches.
As a result, a tan indicated that a person had the wealth to provide the time and leisure to engage in outdoor activities and take vacations in warm places. The far healthier diet of the upper classes also contributed to a darker skin. So a tan became an indication of belonging to the upper classes, and became the sought-after skin tone among the wealthy, and was, and still is, a status symbol.
Among people who want lighter skin, a common historical “social status” reason is that in some historically agricultural societies, darker skin was a signal that one was a poorer farm worker, compared to the mostly higher SES people who did not have to work outside and thus had lighter skin. Apparently, such “social status” of skin color is still present today among some people (mainly not White European ancestry), despite farm work being a much smaller percentage of employment today (both in the ancestral locations and in the US); the reversal of “social status” associations described by @MWolf 's post #4 did not appear to occur.
My experience is similar to what @MWolf describes as a Latina growing up in the ‘70s.
My mother was a migrant worker who was relatively fair-skinned. I remember her using Esoterica Fade Cream. I don’t think that she was trying to be “lighter” as she already was pretty fair … more that she was trying to even out her complexion and get rid of dark spots. When she was young, people often didn’t see her as Hispanic, which worked in her favor.
My parents raised us as assimilators. We weren’t taught Spanish and grew up in a pretty Anglo area. I also was pretty fair like my mom (my siblings got my dad’s darker skin tone). As a result of our neighborhood and solidly middle class lifestyle, I grew up thinking tan skin was an asset. No, I couldn’t lighten my not-blond hair with Sun In like my friends, but I could easily get a beautiful tan, which drove my mother crazy. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood why she opposed my darker skin. I was just trying to fit in with my tanning friends.
I don’t have strong feelings about this now. I can see why fair women want to spray tan (although it often looks orange and not great, IMO). And I can see why porcelain skin can be attractive to some, like they have avoided skin damage. Ds1 married a very fair woman who was born and spent many years in Hawaii. She’s already had melanomas taken off her scalp. She really has to be careful in the sun. They both hope their kids get our family’s melanin.
I’m also a kid from the barrio with a similar background. Mom was fair skinned with a descendant history of Spanish land contracts from the King of Spain. The family had green eyes. My Dad had a rancher’s caramel color from years out in the Texan sun. I had tons of freckles so, no sun for me.
I remember sitting in an advanced honors Senior class in Civics and I was surprised that most of the girls were absent. I made a facial gesture to another girl, bookish-like me, who passed a note to me. “at Palm Springs getting tans for Prom”. I laughed and said, under my breath, something like, “that burn is gonna hurt!”
Apparently, my teacher was not in a good mood that morning in our SCal class. He said something like: “is there something personal you want to share out loud? We can wait.”
I didn’t like being stared at by the whole class, so I remember saying something like: “Sir, I think it’s funny that most of the girls, from this class, are getting sunburned red, in Palm Springs right now for Prom. That skin is gonna peel!” Musta been the way I said it because the whole class of boys and 3 girls erupted in laughter.
The teacher’s mouth dropped and the look on his face, of incredulity, and his processing of the information, just made us laugh even louder.
I will never forget the belly laugh we heard come out of his body. We all laughed at his laugh, even louder.
The teacher, from next door came over! We had interrupted their Friday morning quiz! Our teacher was useless that morning and he passed out current events magazines and tried to teach, but nothing was happening.
On Monday morning, when the bright pink girls returned, he couldn’t lecture because he was trying to contain himself. We couldn’t stop laughing, either. The pink set didn’t know the joke. The teacher went to his back office and told us to read ahead in the book. That was impossible because he would occasionally look up and start laughing again.
We did try to read, but then we would hear him try to stifle his laughter and he made it worse! It was the most human we had ever seen this “almost elderly man” respond in front of us!
Similar circumstances that my Bolivian father would not teach us Spanish. We lived in a Wonder Years neighborhood in my elementary school years. My mother was of Irish descent and fair. Green eyes. I have my fathers features, but lighter olive. As a youngster, it was darker from playing in the sun. He never said anything, I was just a kid. The older I got, the more he would say, “don’t burnyourself”. Because of his experience with rascism here and there, it was importsnt to him that we were “white”. He was a civil engineer, never got in the sun, but was definitely had a Hispanic skin tone.
I did get tans in my teens and early 20’s. But after I graduated at some point, I decided that with my dark hair and eyes, I looked more attractive with light skin. Then after about a decade, I decided I needed to protect my skin from wrinkles and wear sunscreen every day.
Today I would say I have light skin with a light olive tone. But I do it for the contrast with my hair.
on a funny note, when I was about 8, in my height of outdoor playing and getting dark, I was taking a bath. I was trying to wash the dirt of my side waist, and was getting frantic. I yelled for my sister, who was 16. (She’s not my fathers daughter). I was upset and she checked me out, sat back and said “for Pete’s sakes that’s your skin”. Lol!
Is that a thing? I follow exactly one influencer on IG and noticed that she recently had some shots done where her face and upper body didn’t match her lower body at all. I thought it was a mistake, but you’re saying it’s a trend?
I failed to mention that I was being whimsical, but many who work outside and/or golf a lot tend to possess this patina. hehe. In Wisconsin it is known as a “farmer’s tan”, thought I think it could also be referred to as a “golfer’s tan”.
Tan lines are a “problem” for me, not a “thing.”
I play pickleball outside multiple times per week, and I ride my bike outside multiple times per week.
Sooo… I wind up with a tan on about the bottom four inches of above my knees, and NO tan on my feet, because I have to wear shoes for both of those. I generally wear crew neck tanks or tees, so I wind up with tan lines from those also, and when I want to wear something with a v-neck it looks funny because my chest is pasty white. I do wear sunscreen, but still get tan.
My face is usually “porcelain white,” because even at the beach I use tons of sunscreen and wear a hat when I’m playing pickleball.
To clarify, in my question above I wasn’t speaking of tan lines, which occur naturally. I was talking about an influencer who spray tans and seems to have forgotten half of her body.
Not all of us! I burned so many times in my youth, even though my nurse mom always made sure I wore sunscreen - it just wasn’t particularly effective back then. The time I stayed in full sun at the pool too long and burned so badly that I couldn’t open my eyes the next morning, I started covering up and hanging in the shade.
My kids have always worn sunscreen, never been burned, and aren’t worried about the color of their skin one way or the other.
I grew up in Florida during the era of, “You can never be too rich, too thin, or too tan.”
I am fair, fair, fair with freckles and (used to be) brunette hair. I did not and do not tan well. I always wanted to be tan and spent way too much time trying to attain that. My hope was always that my freckles would meld together, and I would be tan. That didn’t happen. I was always jealous of tan, non-freckled complexions. I grew up around many Cuban people who had absolutely gorgeous, olive skin.
I couldn’t care less now about the lightness or darkness of my skin (though I still don’t like my freckles. Which I think are now more accurately described as age spots).
I grew up in apartheid South Africa where unscrupulous, unethical businessmen made money off selling “skin lightening creams” to African people who, I guess, hoped lighter skin would help them under that system. It made some people rich and left a lot of people with discolored and scarred skin due to the chemicals used in them. So when I see a headline about “lighter skin color”, that always makes me shudder as I remember seeing these poor people.
I believe (or is it apocryphal?) that Coco Chanel helped popularize tans. Like others above, I remember tanning with just baby oil in the 80s (no surprise that too many people I know ended up with melanoma or skin cancer).
Two damaging extremes of the same spectrum. Needless to say, I always wear sunscreen now.
