the one about fake tan

It seems only right that after my last two posts on facials and high heels that I complete the trilogy with one on fake tan. Also, we had a First Communion in the house yesterday so obviously I’ve been in a spray booth recently.

My first spray tan was was a revelation.
I am Irish person with very Irish colouring (not a compliment). I am blessed with both freckles and rosacea on pale pink, tan resistant skin. So, the sight of my legs in a deep brown colour is one I can drink in for hours.  Yesterday, in the church, a bit like the little boys with the white rosettes on their labels who checked their new watches every time the second hand did a lap, so I looked down lovingly at my legs that almost matched the pew they were sitting on. I was glowing, inside and out. (A bit orange on the ankles and knees and my two thumbs were a deep nutty brown, but still, I had a tan!)

In the late nineties I tried fake tan at home a few times. First I exfoliated. (Scrubbed myself raw in the shower.) Then, I moisturised. (More vigorous rubbing, this time with Marks & Spencer’s magnolia body “crème”.) After that I very carefully rubbed on a tiny amount of San Tropez and immediately washed my hands like a surgeon. All of which left me a tiny, tiny bit beige.  

With the arrival of children in my life, those hours were simply not available any more.  And, when I had morning sickness the fake-tanny smell of biscuits wafting up from my body was particularly off-putting. Added to that, I think I believed some nonsense in a magazine saying that pale looked nice. (Yeah, right. Maybe on Nicole Kidman.)

But now, I have seen the light. Being brown for a day or two is worth standing in a booth, each foot on a square of kitchen towel, being sprayed like a car, wearing a paper thong.

 I don’t mind the incredulous look the beautician gives me when I ask her not to make me too dark, knowing that she will ignore me. I don’t mind the hard sell on “Fake stockings”, which, the girl behind the counter assured me, was brilliant new product for covering up bad burn scars. It felt rude to point out I don’t have any so I just said I’d think about it. 

I know, I smell biscuity, by tomorrow my hands will be patchy and I’ll spend the next week looking mud splattered and a bit dirty. But hey, I’m worth it.