The Man Tan
Written by Kirk, Thursday, March 19th, 2009 in Q&AsIt’s Spring Break at my college right now, and lots of friends and girls I know are off to Florida, Mexico, and other places where the sun strikes closer to the earth. What’s a pasty white guy in the Midwest (or equal latitudes) to do to compete with all the baked-skinned people coming back in a week? Can I get just as good a tan as long as it’s sunny where I’m at?
The “Man tan” is a hard thing to perfect.
Here’s the skinny: you don’t want to be too cooked lest you look like tanned leather. Yes, a lot of people will be coming back who went from porcelain to coffee, but that’s not necessarily what you should go for- it’s often too much. Tans are wonderful things (and honestly, you should try to keep a SLIGHT tan as much as you can, as it keeps you looking healthy and it hides a lot of really basic skin imperfections), but going overboard makes you look stupid and very MTV-ish.
To get that tan, I recommend just hanging out at a local pool or something- the more real the tan is, the better. Pick up some reasonably short swimtrunks (i.e. about to mid thigh, not to the knee nor speedo-tiny) and lay out in the sun (on both sides) and look awesome. If you absolutely must, you can always hit a tanning bed, though those are notoriously nasty/expensive/cheap looking. No matter what you do, try to get a noticeable tan (maybe a slight shade darker than your normal skin tone- look at the tan line to tell), but nothing excessively dark.
Still, to be more blunt and answer your question more directly- get a light tan. Don’t go super dark, just something healthy. You’ll beat out some of those proverbial skin cancer victims easily.
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Tags: tanning
And for the love of every god every worshiped do not…. DO NOT substitute real tanning with anything sprayed on. Becoming a different race via a tanning bed would be preferable to running around looking like a Oompah Loompah.