Beyond the pale

When someone challenges you to a white-off, don't panic. They aren't calling your racial identity into question. It just means that not only are you freakishly pale, but that no one can believe just how pale you are, so much so that they feel the need to hold their forearm up to yours and compare.

It's hard to pin down the moment when tanning became hip. There was a time early in this country's history when tanned skin was a distinguishing feature of poor people who had to work for a living. Fair skin was considered to be better because it indicated high social status.

In the 1950s, bombshells like Bette Davis and Veronica Lake looked glamorous onscreen with their radiant porcelain complexions. The faces of film stars were powdered to look white, and their lips were rouged to amplify that glow. I'm sure that no one could forget those shots of Marilyn Monroe standing over a grate with her skirt in the air, her white legs gleaming against the flashbulbs of cameras.

Sadly, all of this is a thing of the past.

I started getting comments on my skin when I was in high school. The worst moment was in gym class when someone pointed out that my white shirt was blending into my skin, and that I should really consider going outside sometime.

It seems that only my mom and random 60-year-old ladies are the ones that actually think my skin is appealing. They say that I'm lucky because when I'm their age, I'll still look young.

I guess that's not so bad. Doctors say that saving your skin from sun exposure is a good thing. Your mom didn't slather you in all that sunscreen when you were 6 for nothing.

UV radiation leads to premature aging of the skin and damage that can cause skin cancer. Tanning beds have been proven to be just as dangerous, if not more so, than overexposure to the sun, but a lot of people think that beds are a safe alternative to the real thing.

The truth is that tanning beds emit the same UV radiation that the sun does, and when fair-skinned people like me try to go tanning, we burn just as we normally would outside on a nice day. A lot of people think that burning is good, because after a while it will turn into a tan. Well that's true, but if you really think about it, a tan is really like one body-sized scab that appears after any other sort of flesh wound.

Texas and Tennessee have made it a law for tanning salons to post warnings about people who shouldn't tan. Among them are kids under 13, people on birth control and redheads.

The original function of tanning beds when they were invented way back in the early 20th century was to treat rickets because doctors thought that the vitamin D in sunrays could make bones stronger.

It wasn't until the 1970s that tanning beds made a big comeback. A scientist doing an experiment on the effects of UV rays on athletes discovered that the only effect they had on the body was a golden tan.

Most people that go tanning are obsessed with how they look. They put a lot of time and money into things like the gym, hair products, clothes and cosmetics. These are the people that everyone aspires to be. But, let's face it: there are many ugly people that go tanning too.

And for every bronzed beauty, there are 10 carrot sticks walking around out there. Seeing them is a little bit jarring, mostly because I can't help but wonder if they see how orange they are, but also because I can't believe they'd be willing to do something to themselves that would make them turn funny colors.

Unfortunately, having pale skin alienates me from the beauty culture. Fair skin is no longer hot, but contrary to what most people think, being pale doesn't mean that you have some incurable disease or even that you're a shut-in.

Sometimes when I'm at the mall I feel like I'm just one of a small handful of pale people. It seems that our flock is thinning out more and more rapidly as America spins even farther into its already out-of-control obsession with beauty.

This leaves me at an extreme disadvantage, because in order to win people over in social situations, I will have to use my personality and intelligence.

To be honest, although white-offs make me feel marginalized and alienated, they have grown to become an important part of my life. I have grown to accept my paleness as being special because hardly anyone is pale anymore.

In 10 years, this whole tanning craze will fade out. This will probably be at the same time that leather-faced 30-year-olds start making appearances at a cancer ward near you.