My lifelong fixation with tanning pales in comparison to its inherent dangers. Which means a new holiday wardrobe is required
In the mid-1980s, Bergasol ran a series of magazine and billboard adverts for suntan oil. My recall of these is remarkable, since five minutes ago I rummaged around in my bag to find my phone, but by the time I located it had no memory of who I had been planning to call. And if I go upstairs to fetch something, I have to recite the name of it under my breath. But I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes. With suntan oil adverts that are burnt on to my retina decades later.
Two women sit on the edge of a pool wearing only silver bikini bottoms. They are facing away from the camera, so it’s not rude but definitely a bit spicy for the pre-internet era. They are identical, down to their french-plaited blonde hair, except one is pale and the other deeply tanned. The campaign ran with several taglines, but the one I recall best is where the pale woman says, “£4.50 for a suntan oil? You could buy three champagne cocktails for that.” To which her suntanned friend replies: “I never have to.”
What I absorbed from this advert was that getting a suntan was summer’s premier competitive sport. I wasn’t idiotic enough to fall for the idea that shelling out on beauty products in order not to have to pay for your own alcohol was a savvy financial investment, but I took the she-who-tans-wins message to heart, and spent most of the summers since fixated on being brown, browner, brownest. This both despite and because of the fact my natural skin tone is the shade of long-life skimmed milk. Nor was I alone: in 2000, a survey showed that 50% of Britons said returning with a tan was the single most important reason for going on holiday.
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