Amanda Reza
Warm weather and sunny skies are often an invitation for many Americans to go to the beach or pool. While enjoying the outdoors, a common activity for many people during the summer is tanning. Despite the American desire for a “perfect skin tone,” tanning is harmful and has many social consequences.
While acquiring vitamin D is important for several bodily functions including bone growth and absorbing calcium, there are many risks associated with prolonged sun exposure. Not only can tanning cause painful sunburns, it puts individuals at greater risk for melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.
Despite the risks associated with tanning, many Americans feel that gaining a darker shade allows them to “look healthier.” It assists in hiding acne, skin imperfections and light-colored body hair. Tanning can also help paler individuals’ self esteem against the negative connotation of looking pasty or sickly.
The “sun-kissed” skin tone equates to vacationing, since beaches are a sign of wealth in the Western world. This trend became popular in the 1920s when Coco Chanel accidentally acquired a tan while vacationing. This event reversed the stigma of tan skin as a sign of low socioeconomic status, and led to the relatively recent fad in the United States of having the ideal tanned skin.
For many darker individuals who have frequently heard phrases such as “you are so lucky to be tan,” the feelings are often not mutual. In most countries, paler skin constitutes the beauty standard. In America, non-European ethnicities feel torn between cultural standards and American beauty.
The Implicit Association Test, a study conducted by Project Implicit, “measures the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations or stereotypes.” This social-psychological method detects an individual’s automatic mental ideas on a concept. According to the test, 70 percent of all people demonstrated a preference to white and lighter skin tones, while 17 percent are neutral.
This skin tone bias roots itself in an unconscious racism that can be found in all cultures. There are many reasons that individuals of different cultures avoid the sun. For example, in China and Japan, women carry umbrellas for shade as paler skin is associated with being more feminine and delicate.
In addition, darker tanning is thought to be linked with aging. In India, becoming “too tan” can make a girl seen as “unfit for marriage.” A strong animosity can be held for black individuals where preference for lighter skin ties to centuries of slavery and civil rights inequalities.
Almost all cultures adopt whitewashing, culturally assimilating into white culture through altering their looks and through other means. A common way to achieve this involves skin bleaching, which is not only physically harmful, as it can be poisoning, but it is mentally poisoning as well. Used as a survival technique, this trend only enables white supremacy rather than accepting the color of other ethnicities. When an individual’s natural color is considered ugly, undesirable or a hindrance toward being accepted in society, it is hard to feel comfortable in one’s own skin.