That Orange Glow: A Self Tanning Retrospective, Part 1

As we're all starting to get springy with it down here in southeast Alabama, I thought I'd share some thoughts and insights on self-tanning in a three part series. 

Easter

I have a love/hate relationship with it. As a pale middle school kid growing up in what felt like the tanning bed capital of the world during a time when the movie Casper was only a couple of years old, you can draw your own conclusions as to what my life was like. (Bullies are mean--teach your kids to be kind, people!) My mom wouldn't let me get in a tanning bed, for which I obviously thank her for today. Not that it would have helped--I never tanned. NEVER. I always burned. No color whatsoever could I gain from the sun--except freckles. Man, I had a lot of nicely tanned freckles.

So when I discovered self-tanning lotion, I was thrilled. And then I was orange. See, that first bottle of Jergens I bought in Extra Dark didn't really work on me that well. In fact, not a lot of the those early self-tanners were my friend. For one thing, they reeked. I have the nose of a bloodhound, and I can smell the DHA in the lotion before it even causes the chemical reaction with your dead skin cells (that's super fun to think about, isn't it?). Then, they streaked. I tried really, really hard to apply it right, but it never looked perfect. Especially on my feet and knees. And it was so sticky--I always felt like I had to stand in place for an hour before it would dry.

Not only did I look only slightly less orange than Anne, I also had matching orange hair, courtesy of everyone's favorite nineties hair lightener, Sun In.

And then there were the orange palms. Oh, the orange palms.

As a former orange palmer myself, I totally noticed that Justin Hammer forgot to wash his hands after apply his faux glow in Iron Man 2.

But then, along came spray tans...