The Tan

Draft in Progress

It started as a goal to simply "knock the white off." That was it. I only wanted to give myself a healthy glow so my legs and arms, the color of bleached sidewalk, could fit the description of "sunkissed," to innocently match the highlights of my hair. I had given up tanning beds. I was 25 and the reality that I couldn't bake in the sun forever was upon me. You better start now. I had told myself. It is perfectly avoidable to not have to look like another over-baked 30s-age woman-fighting-to-stay-girl spreading a set of white teeth on the inside of a leather smile.

So I took to artifical tanning. I learned the art of liquid tanning on QT, the cheap brand of tanning cream which turned everything orange in its wake, compliments of my mother, who modeled for me how to color-code every limb, including the use of a paintbrush was spread across even those digits so that no part of the body was still showing the shame of The White. The white skin: it must be destroyed,and the fake tan was the cure.