Why am I being bullied for my skin when white women are celebrated with fake sunburns?

The cool girl did it in the locker room.

It was a rite of passage to womanhood, like the first bras and menstruation. Hit the colored bushes on still-growing thighs, use green paper towels to cover completely, and the pungent smell of burning plastic.

At the time, as a 12-year-old brunette girl in a very white group, I was surprised to find it legal. Blackface and cultural appropriation was wrong. How can I change my color?

Since then, I have boycotted fake tans. I was bullied with brown nicknames like “Curry House” and “Ap,” and went back to elementary school and was told to be the “color of riot.”

The audacity that others could celebrate to be what he was being punished for seemed cruel and unfair. It took them years to learn that bullying and skin color were ugly until they grew up.

Twenty years later, faux tanning is a multibillion-dollar industry that preys on anxiety. Almost all online cosmetologists have their own “tanning” section and many articles about the secrets of tanning.

Fake tans are not only normalized and accepted, they thrive. This is one of the most openly accepted double standards of white privilege. White people are using our looks as a fashion trend, while people of color are being abused for our looks.

It is ironic that white people suffer from skin discoloration on a daily basis. He cites health risks, patriarchal beauty standards and a lack of market regulation as “bad” reasons.

The same is true for some tanning methods.

The fact that fake tans really affect “tanned” people is clear. Not only does it confuse the self-consciousness of people of color (in school, at age 12, I was now wondering if whites are my color, did I need to go dark? Where do you end up?), it fosters fun and spins the race. Due to seasonal trends, fake tans depend on anxiety.

It tells you that your real skin is not enough. This will create a feedback loop. Without a well-defined end goal, you can reapply when the fake tan has worn off, or you can increase the number of applications and make them look darker over time.

Vulnerability incentivizes celebrating a person who tans “properly,” celebrating a person who “shines” and “looks bronze,” or bashes a person who looks “pale” or “streaked.”

Another big hypocrisy of wearing fake tans is that people of color naturally face prejudice, racism, and oppression because of their skin tone. The suppression increases only depending on how dark you are.

Think about what the lack of expression of people of color means. When asked what kind of fake tan he was wearing, he was confused by a white man who couldn’t believe his whole body was the same color and looked at him vaguely as if he was joking.

I don’t consider it a compliment. Comments like this undermine my existence. This suggests that we are genuinely surprised that others get a tan without using a fake tan. How many browns do I have to meet to be asked that question?

In recent years, lines have become increasingly blurred in social media videos of people trying to guess who is South Asian and who is white.

In late 2018, I started talking to my followers about fake tans on Instagram. It prompted Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” music video. There, the white singer Ariana Grande looks the same color as me.

I was angered by the fact that this aspect was not only clearly normalized, but also marked as desirable. My followers generally agreed with me, but we differed on whether fake tans were generally acceptable.

Many of my PoC followers told me the same story of white friends being overshadowed like them and expressing a similar sense of alienation.

I was also surprised by the overflow of emotions from white women. Many white women said they were frustrated and tired of the fake tan, but still felt compelled to use it.

Many of them cited their obsession with wearing fake tans as “genetic,” comments from mothers who thought they would look healthy after using them, or portraits of older siblings in the family. She said that she needed to “live”. Some women even reported being bullied at school because of her “pasty” face.

I don’t think there is an answer to “dark because I was bullied white” because my skin color is bullied too.

I think the question is: how can you get the shadow you’re in? There must be a way to address vulnerabilities that do not harm people who are already marginalized.

Many white women I spoke with also had double standards when it came to wearing fake bronzers. They did not condone tanning beds or tanning tablets, but somehow faked a “proper” tan by using fake tanning moisturizers or citing fictitious “lines” that do not intersect. I became a user.

All fake tans are on the same spectrum – changing your skin color will help maintain the same system of dual standards and anxiety about your “natural” color.

It’s not right to praise white people who wear skin color as a trend, but people of color face real oppression because of skin color itself.

A fake tan is a waste of time, money and energy.

I find it immoral that so many people benefit from each other’s anxieties, and it would be great if we could focus on and celebrate other areas of our appearance. ..

I live in the northern hemisphere, mostly cold, gray and rainy. The idea that white people tan all year round and “tan” is ridiculous and appears to be a very ridiculous standard.

It’s time to put down the application gloves, turn off the tanning bed, put down the tanning tablet, put down the spray tent, put it down, and learn to be in your own fake skin without tanning.

Laila Woozeer (£16.99, Simon & Schuster) Not Quite White is out nowAmazonWhenAll the good bookstores...