I recently found out there’s an illness called “tanorexia.”
I thought I might suffer from it, being so unable to get a suntan.
I went to the beach yesterday and everyone asked me
“Is this the first time you’ve been to the beach this year?”
Sicilians ask me that every time I go to the beach. They ask it while averting their gaze off to one side for safety reasons, since looking directly at me could burn out their retinas.
I always laugh. No, I have actually been to the beach, gone red and then peeled back to white again, quite a few times already this summer.
I don’t just get this from Sicilians, by the way. I have always been abnormally white even by English standards. I spent my school years being the butt of jokes about phosphorescence, and causing confusion amongst moths. My legs, sparkling in the sunlight, were once held responsible for the school team losing a hockey match.
So anyway, I looked up TANOREXIA on Wikipedia.
Apparently it’s an excessive addiction to suntanning and sun beds, and it makes you look like this:
Never before have I felt so at peace with my albino-like inability to tan.
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ahahahahah pics are very funny! me too I’m half sicilian … we can follow each Others if u want 🙂 Baci! 😉
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Just visited your blog – I loved the pizza article!
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Haha, that first pic of the tanorexics is the lady the media dubbed “Tan Mom” she was accused of taking her 5yr old daughter to a tanning booth.
I love the white skin and to me looks more healthy! Some cultures value white porcelain skin as a symbol of wealth and ideal beauty. I just think we should embrace what we have bc it always looks more beautiful when we do that.
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I used to feel so self conscious about being really white, In the eighties the beauty ideal was women like Donna Summer and that dancer called Coco from the movie Fame. And of course Italians think that lacking a suntan is a hideously embarrassing fashion blunder.
Nowadays I don’t care, I think white can look nice too.
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Bleh, I’ve always been horrified by those super-fake-tans. Not because I think the people look necessarily bad (on that I have no comment) or even out of some faux-concern for their health, but really just because the first time I ever saw one I thought the person was in blackface and I’ve associated the two ever since.
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The people in these photos look downright scary.
I foun d out recently they have a blackface trend in Japan – it’s the Japanese equivalent of Punk, because the traditional Japanese beauty ideal is to be a white as a geisha.
http://sprinklepuffball.blogspot.it/2013/02/ganguro.html
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That’s very interesting! I wouldn’t necessarily call it the Japanese equivalent of punk, since Japan has a very large punk scene itself. But yes, the sentiment is the same, that bucking of what is considered “in” and over exaggerating things typically considered pretty (like makeup) to make them outlandish.
Still not my personal style, but I’m oddly more comfortable with Japanese people doing it than white people…? I think maybe because they aren’t actually emulating black people, but seem to be poking fun at California culture. Which should probably insult me, being born and raised in San Diego, but I’ve seen so many girls who actually do that, so… I can’t really say anything. We brought it on ourselves.
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Despite being 1/2ish Sicilian, I do the ‘burn-peel to white-repeat’ so . . .
To each their own. I would doubt, however, that any of your above tannies would be able to find more than a handful of people on the face of the planet that think they look good.
But what do I know?
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In Sicily that would be considered unacceptable. You would end up with a committee of Sicilians in swimming trunks planning a tanning schedule for you to “train your skin” till it learns to tan properly.
“You have Sicilian skin” they would tell you, “You just have to believe in yourself.”
But don’t panic – they would not make you look like one of these tanorexics!
I was once abducted by a posse of neighbours and detained on the beach for several hours till I managed to plead the Celtic opt-out clause!!!
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A Scottish friend of mine used to say that Scots were naturally blue-skinned and that the sunlight made them turn white 😉
Am a pallid little worm myself, and Spaniards take much pleasure in commenting on that.
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Hahaha, this made me laugh. My partner is always bemoaning the fact he can’t tan. I think we should be happy whatever our skin colour…to which he rolls his eyes and says I can’t truly understand being blessed with brown skin ☺️
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Yes I am inclined to agree with him!!! There’s something about very white skin that I think always looks a bit comical 😀
Though the one advantage is that when I arrange to meet my friends on the beach, they can see me a mile away shining like a torch – they say I even glow under water!
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