on being sun-kissed

There's something about being tan that makes me love myself more than when I'm not tan. I know, it seems a little odd, but I'm always more comfortable with myself when my skin has color to it. Being tan doesn't make me weight less, it doesn't make my muscles more toned, it doesn't change my height, but it makes me feel good and I love that. I know that I like seeing the obvious change being in the sun makes. Seeing the tan lines from where the white meets the tan makes me happy.

But, and this is a serious but, I do not condone tanning beds. Its fake. You should be tan in the summer and white in the winter. It's sorta creepy when someone is overly tanned in the middle of December without spending a month in the Caribbean. People who are obsessed with going and tanning never look natural. Their skin is either an odd shade of orange-- which makes you think they've put on self tanner-- or they resemble leather-- the kind that's meant for couches and shoes. And these are all current things. Can you imagine the wrinkles in twenty-five years?

While I admit that I've been to a tanning bed before, in my defense it was just to be safe. Safe and tanning bed in the same sentence? Let me explain. When my family's taken a vacation where we are going to be on the beach and in the sun the whole time, I sometimes have gone and gotten a base tan. Here's where the safe part comes in. If I was my usual winter-white self, spending a week in Mexico, or Belize or anywhere tropical would have killed, yes killed, my skin. Absolutely frying in the sun for a week on vacation would have been worse than the few times I went for the minimum time in a tanning bed. Plus I believe tanning should be a gradual thing, hence the reason why I always apply sunscreen, even if I'm only going to be out for a little while. And I always drink lots of water and use lots of lotion; good hydration leads to happy, tanned skin.