Back in the 70s, your goal (mainly women) was to get as brown as your skin would permit. Sun BLOCK or sun screen was basically nonexistant. You wanted to amplify your rays - SPF numbers hovered around 2, 4 and 8. Women typically lathered on Crisco and baby oil to get that deep baked look.
As I spray my SPF 50 on the kids and apply the SPF 30 to my shoulders, I reflect on how times have changed. Many of my children's friends aren't even allowed to play outside without sun block! Of course, no one wants skin cancer... but there's something to be said for having a "healthy glow". Right or wrong, I personally feel healthier when I've got a tan - perhaps it's healthier to be pale and pasty, but I'm a true believer in the old school 70s motto that Brown Is Beautiful.
Take a minute, if you have time, to check out some old advertisements from the golden age of the tan. Enjoy.
I really like the lady with the vibrator on her face.
ReplyDelete-Camille
Damn! I used to get tan that way in the 70s--the natural way--by burning my skin under sunlight with oil and a reflector blanket--I earned my tough skin, not like the babies nowadays who use tanning sprays and look like Oompa Loompas. Hee hee
ReplyDeleteI love my retro-fifties porcelain skin, so glad I shied away from the sun, since the seventies as a small girl. Tans are overrated.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, bain de soleil had the most amazing TV commercials, sensual and exotic.
ReplyDeleteFirst ad: Alana Stewart. Third ad: Rene Russo.
ReplyDeleteI never could tan, thanks to my red-headed father. Oh well.
Now it's good to be orange via an array of topical chemicals and artificial light. I'm a pasty fellow who doesn't much go for the sun or skin cancer, but if you're going to do it, at least do it so you look NATURAL and not like you rubbed some Tang powder on your body.
ReplyDeleteTang powder! I love it.
ReplyDeleteI forgot about the reflector blanket, autumnforest. Tanning back in those days was more like a barbeque than sunbathing.
Other than the chance of skin cancer, there's usually the change that one arm will get darker than the other at the beginning of the summer. Then you spend the rest of the summer trying to get sun on your pasty face so that it evens out with the farmer's tan brown of your limbs. Still, these are much lovelier worries compared with winter frost bite.
ReplyDeleteIt's the dild...erm, "spot massagers" that make that last ad for me. Right on.
ReplyDeleteSun spots, Solar flares, Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections. They aren't just for global warming.
ReplyDeleteModeration is a pretty good idea to have velvety soft skin, but as sunlight is the direct cause of nearly all living organisms on Earth, you might want to catch a little. Vampires are not real things.
i am so guilty :( of brown is better and am going to die a shortened life because of it. :(
ReplyDeleteps i recently purchased a pair of those retro dr. scholl's i see in one of the above ads. they KILLED my feet. i guess as a 60 lb kid they were comfy :( i was so bummed.
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