sunrise skin

In my merry adventures on the coast of cold and humidity, I have come across yet another fascinating peculiarity on which I absolutely must comment. I do not intend to offend any of the normal people on this coast with this observation, but perhaps the normals will allow me to articulate what fascinates and irritates us all.

I should point out that as I type, there is an ice storm outside. That's right friends, tiny pellets of ice are raining down from the sky, dusting the streets, cars and awnings of New York with a slippery, frozen layer. So that noted, I can now comment on how I have come across several people in the last month or so in the Northeast, who seem to have the wonderful fortune of maintaining a sun-kissed glow, long after the warming rays stopped springing from our favorite ball of fire.

I hail from the Golden State, where even if one is "pale", he or she still maintains a tan better than most from pretty much any other area of the country would have druing the summer. This is simply because of the climate and the fact that most outside activities can be performed on a year-round basis. Because of this lucky exposure, I know what the year-round tan looks like. Let me be the first to illuminate the masses: orange is not tan. Orange is orange.

The average man and woman have skin that undergoes changes throughout the year. Even if one does not worship the sun, there are changes which occur when the melanin in the skin is activated and produces a tan during the spring and summer months. After this time however, when the sun retreats to it's perches high in the sky, the skin begins to fade to a more blanched version of its summer, titian glory. This is the natural order of pigment, and rightly so.

But you see, the non-sun tanner never goes through that horrifying loss. The indoor tanner has that fabulous, I-just-got-back-from-Santorini look indefinitely. To boot, the sunless tanner is absolutely convinced that his tan looks real. As if the 1982 Chevelle-driving, Pizzeria-working, high school dropout has really spent 2 weeks sunning in Martinique. Come now.

Tangerine is nowhere on the spectrum of acceptable colors for human skin. Nowhere, in any part of the world will you find someone of any ethnicity to whom orange is a natural shade. Also nowhere, will you find a large culture of people to whom skin resembling leather, is actually considered attractive; a sad byproduct of overexposure to unnatural, drying UV prolific bulbs.

So why? Why pretend, o broke, pallid Long Islander, that you are the lucky phenom, to whom the apricot glow is the natural order? You not only fool no one, but you look the fool all the while. Did I mention it's December?