don't be pasty!

As a blue-eyed half-ginger with a genetic propensity for skin cancer, I am concerned.

I live by a pool. This is a thing I very much enjoy. Alarming to me, however, is the perpetual toasting of epidermis going on in the surrounding lounge chairs. Girls and boys lay out for hours on end, not just soaking up but cooking themselves in the midday offshoots of that burning radiative ball of chemicals inhabiting our sky.

All the racist imperialist preoccupation-with-whiteness legacy is a bad thing, and I am happy to see it out of vogue in my neighborhood at least. But it seems now scorching oneself is the color of choice.

I may just be bitter. At Girls' Camp as a teenager, I lost the Tannest Legs Competitions without fail, as my stems were so pale as to have a bluish sheen. My largely Scandinavian ancestry has doomed me to glow in the dark. I wear gloves, glasses, and a big hat out to garden and burn within fifteen minutes of sun exposure.

But my parents are already having tumors removed and going in for laserage regularly. They never laid out. I don't think tanning beds existed when they grew up and yet here we are.

So please, do not UV-light yourself. Do not treat the poolside like a rotisserie oven. Do not cake your skin with bronzer or self-tan. Embrace your natural complexion, whether it be cream or ebony or bronze or brown. Rock what you've got and say no to tanorexia.

(Also, I am not a meat pie. Nor am I a nipple patch. Please don't call me 'pasty.')