History of Sun (?) Tanning

Pale Female and Tanned Male - Rubens

Well as you probably suspected, tanning is all Coco Chanel's fault.  In 1923 after accidentally catching sun while on the Duke of Westminster's yacht, she descended with a tan and promptly started the tanning craze.  Coco Chanel famously declared, "The 1929 girl must be tanned... a golden tan is the index of chic."



Before then, pale was the colour to be.  A pale skin demonstrated class -- only field workers and people with menial tasks had suntans.  Today the term redneck is a hangover from this --  the redneck came from the redneck earned in hard field work.  A farmer's tan is more culturally acceptable presumably because you're a farmer and not a field worker. 

Somewhere in my memory I remember a roman emperor ordering pearl diving as a punishment-- it wasn't so much the work but that the suntan would mark them as having fallen from grace (probably from Suetonis - one of my favourite authors).  Anyway, porcelain skin has long been a marker of beauty and even today Nicole Kidman and the like are praised for their luminous (and pale) skin.

Sunkissed? Bronzed?

By the 1950s the suntan had come of age.  The Beach Boys and similar surfie music praised the lifestyle of sun, surf, sand and sex.  The bikini came

Bardot 1960

to be popular (see earlier posting) and thus there was more to be tanned. The next step was, of course, to lose the top.  In the 1960 Brigette Bardot was seen topless on the beaches of St Tropez.  It was the ultimate reference to the burn-the-bra mentality of the 1960s. It became part of the philosophy of liberation and control over women's bodies.  It was also linked to the hippy back-to-nature ethos. Along with love beads and hippy flares. The fashion for topless sunbathing caught on in Australia but never made it big in the USA-though "hippy" states such as Oregon still find it acceptable- even in public, or at least at fairs. Australian women are still okay with topless sunbathing.  Wikipedia cites a 1994-1995 study in which 

Australian researchers asked 118 college-age students to rate the behavior of women who go topless on an 8 point scale, ranging from "Women should have the same right to topless as men" to "Topless women are exhibitionists". They found that 88% of Australian university students of either gender considered it acceptable for women to go topless on public beaches, although they felt that women exposing their breasts in other contexts, such as public parks, was inappropriate. (The full article is available HERE)

In Australia topless bathing is still being challenged.  Though it seems that even in France, the fashion for topless bathing is waning;  according to this article at least.

 And of course the media loves nothing better than catching a celebrity topless. 

Nude sunbathing followed and a number of Australian beaches went the whole way--except for Queensland that is.  I remember back in the 1980s it was quite acceptable and even de rigeur but I think that's slightly changed.  The answer to getting an allover tan and thus avoid aesthetically unappealing tan lines is the tankini.  Piz Buin bought out a tankini (though it wasn't called that) in the 1970s;  you bought it at a chemist (it was expensive).  It came in a cylinder and you could see through it.  It was floral.  Luckily I was too young to want or need one. 

Are tanned people more attractive?  According to a survey yes they are

The authors analyzed the data in one of three ways, all of which yielded the same conclusion: tanned individuals were perceived as more attractive than their untanned versions. When matching the data within individuals, 12 of the 45 individuals saw an increase in their attractiveness (when tanned), 2 of the 45 individuals yielded a decrease in attractiveness (when tanned), and the remaining photos did not yield a statistically significant change (within-individuals). Hence, whereas at the aggregate, a tan improves an individual's perceived attractiveness, this did not hold for the majority of submitted photos. Incidentally, the researchers had originally included photos of men as well. However, these did not garner a sufficiently high number of ratings so photos of men were dropped from further consideration.

George Hamilton

The Man Tan

Paul Hollywood

Of course tanning is not JUST a female pursuit.  Men, especially body builders have, for years, tanned themselves.  Who can forget the permanent tan of George Hamilton.  And more recently Paul Hollywood of Great British Bake-Off fame. I decided against putting up pictures of male body builders -- they make me throw up a little in my mouth.

 

 

Sun Lotions and Sun Screens

With the advent of sunbathing or suntanning, came the need for sun products.  The first suntan lotion "Huile de Chaldée" was made in 1928 by French designer Jean Patou.  While the first sunscreen was reputedly made by chemist Franz Greiter in 1946 who was burned while on Mount Piz Buin,  His product Gletscher Crème (Glacier Cream) was sold under the new company Piz Buin.  Since then of course the fashion in suntanning products has soared.  Copertone was one of the first companies that I remember and their cute ads. But that ad was not aimed at teen girls and I basically preferred the old coconut oil.  A small jar from the chemist was the cheapest option -- solid white it melted on contact.  (Today I use coconut oil for cooking and in my hair.)  Then came a product called Gilda which was a "butter" and came in a jar - it was brown and smelled diving and was THE product to have in the 19somethings.  When I go overseas I also bought the local sun products and in Tahiti I fell in love with one that had a local flower in it, Tiare, I sure can remember the smell.  Then there was the Hawaiian Tropic and Reef ranges -- none of them had SP factors that I can remember.  Finally the sun worshipping caught up with people and from the 1980s Australian Cancer Council decided it was time to address the issue -- its famous Slip Slop Slap campaign seemed, to me, to remind us all that sometimes the old fashions (hat, gloves, more 'modest' swimwear) were actually good for us. 

 

The Rise of the Fake Tan

When I was younger and needed a sudden dose of colour, indoor tanning was the only way.  Prior to that people used products such as Bovril to make their legs look darker.  It was sticky and smelled awful and usually left residue between my fingers.  Fast forward to the twenty-first century and now suntanning has made a comeback.  In particular reflected (or fuelled) by the uber tans worn by people in Essex, Jersey Shore and beauty pageants. Suddenly people everywhere are freely admitting that their tan is "fake" (presumably tans that did not come from the sun). They hadn't visited some exotic tropical clime, they had gone somewhere much closer to home. Even Donald Trump has been photographed sporting a VERY bad tan.   This new suntan isn't natural at all - in fact it is quite orange. Orange as the new tan is clearly a part of the more is more culture;  we know it's fake and they don't hide that fact that it's fake -  it's a symbol of conspicuous consumption. 

Trump Tan

A new industry was born--tanning salons and beauty parlors that specialised in spray on tans. A range of products : ones that prepared the skin, product applicators, ones that preserved the fake tan also grew.  So too has a new 'disease' tanorexia. "Snooki" summarises this new obsession best:  "You ask what I am, I am a tan". 

(I can't believe I have just quoted Snooki)