Comment by miladyincontrol
4 days ago
Excessive UV exposure in general not a great time, tanning is just a way of speedrunning damage unless done in very short intervals.
I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker via tanning though. Theres nothing wrong with light skin, its only a few western countries that seem to have a weird fetishization with cooking your skin longterm to get darker short term. Meanwhile most other countries and peoples are willing to damage their skin in whole other ways trying to get the opposite.
They're both imitations of status symbols
"wealthy people can stay inside while poor people work in the sun" vs. "wealthy people can vacation in sunny countries while poor people stay home in the cold"
The US has 200 million white people that live in a mostly warm and sunny climate. Women often tan before vacations or events so they look better in the pictures.
I live in Asia and I think tanned white people do not look good at all most of the time, to me it just looks weird. I much prefer the pale look. People with naturally tan skin however I think look very good.
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Men (7.4%) and women (11.5%) both do it, but yes women in the US in larger numbers. Worth mentioning it’s still a substantial % of men.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5664932/#:~:text=9....
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People also tan before going on sunny vacations to get a “base” and prevent extreme burns. See: flights back to the Midwest from Miami after Spring Break.
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The popularity of tanning is attributed to fashion designer Coco Chanel, who accidentally got too much sun on a Mediterranean cruise in 1923. Since she was a fashion icon, this made the tanned look fashionable.
As an aside, the chemistry behind UV damage is interesting. You can think of DNA as a sequence of four letters: C, G, A, and T. If there are two neighboring T's, UV can move a bond, linking the two T's together (i.e. thymine dimerization). If you're in the sun, each skin cell gets 50-100 of these pairs created per second. Enzymes usually fix these errors, but sometimes the errors will cause problems during DNA replication and you can end up with mutations. Enough of the wrong mutations can cause skin cancer. So wear sunscreen!
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/91
It's too late to edit my previous comment, but I wanted to add one more random tanning fact: UV releases β-endorphin so tanning is literally addictive, to the point that naloxone will cause withdrawal symptoms, at least in mice: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00611-4
I’m naturally pretty pale and don’t get much sunlight, I feel like I look like shit unless I get just a little bit of tan. What most people would consider just a healthy looking “baseline”. It also puts me in a better mood although that may be entirely psychological.
When I was younger I used to intentionally tan for short durations, but now I realize that’s harmful so I just embrace the cave gollum look
I am white as paper, probably one of the palest people and I live in Asia and often get comment that I have the dream skin. While back at home my parents were teasing me about being a ghost and doctors asking am I sick. Interesting how it changes on cultural basis
I think it’s more than just cultural. Yes, it’s definitely a factor, and there are cultures and there were times where paper white was considered beautiful.
But I think on some level we naturally associate severe paleness with being sick or non-social.
I say this as the original commenter
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The mood is probably part light and part vitamin D. The latter can be supplemented. The former can be reproduced with a full spectrum bright lamp or brief sun exposure in the morning.
I've tried all kinds of Vitamin D/bright bulbs/staring at the sun over the years and they do nothing for my mood
I mean sort of but you should probably just get some sun if you can. There’s such a thing as too much tanning, sure, but getting no sun is not healthy either.
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Just eat/drink a lot of carrots instead.
Orange is the new tan?
Why don't you just spend time outside a little bit?
Exposing large amounts of skin to the sun has other health risks when it is freezing outside. :)
Vitamin D deficiency is very common in Canada particularly during winter. The government recommends that everyone intentionally seek out vitamin D rich foods, or to take a supplement.
Cosmetic companies to blame? In the east, they fetishize white / fair skin, while in the west they fetishize dark skin.
Possibly. Its actually insanely frustrating as someone pale that most western brands rarely approach the level of lightness I need to match my skin, and the few that come close often are almost always rather saturated, highly warm tones.
They almost always just stick to tones within the realm of pantone's skin guide, treating it more like a skin bible instead.
Haus labs and their triclone in 000 is one of the few foundations I've ever had match.
People with dark skin do also still struggle to find their tones in most western countries unless they live in a huge city.
No, people who do it are to blame.
You can always use Melanotan II instead to get a good tan while also increasing libido and sleep quality; )
BEWARE.
Melanotan is dangerous, sadly.
Tanning causes melanocyte production in your epidermis. Melanotan causes it throughout your body in an uncontrolled manner. In a wide variety of unrelated tissues.
It can lead to uncontrolled melanocyte production that doesn't shut off - cancer. Aggressive melanomas.
It disrupts normal hormone signalling which may downstream cause a variety of deleterious health effects and disease states.
There are also crazy reports of kidney failure, which may or may not be caused by the drug.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7148395/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23121206/
https://www.actasdermo.org/en-eruptive-dysplastic-nevi-follo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanotan_II says it is banned in the United States, and anything you get on the black market isn't guaranteed to be pure.
Where does it say it's banned?
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I’m pretty sure Melanotan carries the risk of retinal pigmentation, or at least that was the case with the original. Not sure if II is different.
> I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker
> ...
> Meanwhile most other countries and peoples are willing to damage their skin in whole other ways trying to get the opposite.
The grass has more melanin on the other side.
But that's the thing, it's not about "more melanin", but rather about something like:
The grass on the other side has a different amount of melanin be harder-to-achieve and thus more desirable because it previously signaled belonging to the higher socio-economical strata.
It's indeed, baffling, ignoring health consequences: Get fashionably darker skin now: Make your skin look (reasonably universally) irreversibly uglier/older gradually over time. This is perhaps the most controllable way to affect how old you look.
It becomes unmissable once someone is in their 30s: Some still have youthful skin, while others are wrinkly, splotched, and saggy.
I often see women in their mid 20s looking like 35 simply because of the skin.
I saw a paper that shows that peole find contrasts attractive. I can't find it, but here's the same finding for salads https://www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/article/abs/pii/S...
Blond hair with a tan or black hair with white skin are more contrasting so look more striking.
> I'll never understand some people's fetishization with getting darker via tanning though
While some darker skin people want to have lighter skin.
Maybe at some deeper level it’s something about being human. We always want something the other person has
I'm pretty sure it's just cultural. They don't want to be fairer, or darker, they want the social status that it, allegedly, signals.
> We always want something the other person has
This. Same with curly vs straight hair.
The book by Dr. Seuss, “The Star Bellied Sneetches” explorers the phenomenon.
And what's funny is Western countries idolise tanned skin whereas Asian countries tend to idolise lighter skin.
I've never seen anyone look better after tanning.