False-tan phenomenon offers nothing more than fake hues

A Different View

When John Hinde decided to capture the essence of Irishness for his famous postcard, he never for a moment thought he’d spray the red haired, freckled little girl a colour somewhat darker than the accompanying donkey.
But the naturally alabaster, occasionally flushed, Irish woman now apparently feels naked unless she is sprayed from highlighted head to pedicured toenail in a shade you couldn’t accomplish if you actually spent three weeks baking under the Saharan sun.
To their credit, at least they don’t spend weeks on their dark tan, thus exposing themselves to a greater risk of skin cancer than if they walked into a nuclear holocaust.
But when did fair females decide that the Hughie Maughan makeover was the ‘look du jour’ for a big day out?
One of the delights of Modern Ireland is that we now have a nation with skin tones that take us a million miles from the traditional milky and scarlet.
But you don’t see people of African roots deciding to spray themselves in whitewash for their big day out.
So why do those of a paler complexion think that the secret to feeling happy is three coats of high gloss varnish?
A little air brushing just to smooth out the edges is entirely acceptable; indeed, it might be seen as rude not to – but a complete transformation to a point where you’re unrecognisable from the original is a different matter altogether.
And yet, even allowing for our searing summer, nobody could have believed that our fashionistas could have collectively gone so brilliantly brown to a degree that left you wondering if they had suffered a ‘reverse Michael Jackson’ before Ladies Day at the Races.
In fairness, it’s not just the ladies at it – hundreds of the more metrosexual had inexplicably gone a deep hue of Hughie overnight.
Not so long ago, they laughed at the Welsh rugby player Gavin Henson when he arrived onto the Millennium Stadium spray painted to within an inch of his life; these days they might be giggling at the one who was comfortable in his own skin.
In the interests of full disclosure, the only paint on my skin has been from a can via a brush that missed the spot on the wall.
Furthermore, I am to natural tanning what Cristiano Ronaldo is to modesty; I’m the guy on a sun holiday wearing a sun hat, tee-shirt and long shorts, sitting under a massive parasol under a tree in the shade of the apartment block.
But I did once get burnt on a lads’ holiday – not so much deliberately as it being down to drink – then I compounded the problem by mistaking some form of tanning top-up for after-sun.
To this day, I would argue that one of the others had set out to sabotage the sun denier – but the result was that, instead of reducing the peeling, it left me looking like a leper with bits of his face falling off on the return flight.
The only upside was that I somehow managed to get three seats to myself all the way back into Cork.
Even then, I gritted more than grinning and bearing it – but that was the last time my face was anything other than red and white.
Nowadays you hardly have to leave home to get that all-over tan – except it doesn’t actually look like a tan; it looks like what it is . . . you’ve been power-hosed brown in a booth.
Of course, the spray tan quickly faded every time you scrub yourself – but purveyors of the power-hose method will know that more than the memory lingers.
Your now-former brown self continues to live on through the sheets, the towels, the coloured rings that cling to the side of the bath like the residue of a giant, drained pint of Guinness.
But apparently, it’s worth it if only so you look like you’re back from three weeks in the Seychelles when it was really only twenty minutes in a beautician’s.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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