Beauty Unlimited

9. The Bronze Age Revisited: The Aesthetics of Sun Tanning

192 9. The Bronze Age Revisited: The Aesthetics of Sun Tanning jo ellen jacobs In an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled “The Eye of the Beholder,” a woman has plastic surgery to become “beautiful.”1 Yet, when she is unwrapped, her classically symmetrical face appalls the other characters. This society believes that asymmetrical faces are beautiful. When asked which kind of face they prefer, the characters always select the lopsided; they even undergo surgery to achieve unevenness. The television audience finds this evaluation odd, at best. We want to know if there was some utilitarian, religious, or other nonaesthetic basis for these judgments, since the aesthetic preference for symmetry is universal, and is not in the eye of the beholder.2 The preference for women with pale skin is also universal. Anthropologist Peter Frost surveyed over seventy cultures in his book Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice, and discovered that in every culture, in every era, in every ethnic group, women’s beauty is linked with the lightest complexion found within the group.3 This is true except for one bizarre culture: European and American Caucasian culture of the past one hundred years, in which there has been a strong preference for women with tanned skin. This is just as unexpected a preference as one for crookedness, so why do these particular people prefer women with browner skin rather than coloring that occurs without sun exposure? Other than symmetry and paleness of women, there are few other judgments of bodily beauty that are universal.4 Most beauty practices, e.g., tattooing , makeup, hair ornamentation, and clothing fashion, are notoriously variable, differing from one culture to another and sometimes changing quickly within a given culture. A preference for bellbottoms gives way to 193 The Bronze Age Revisited one for skinny jeans, heavily made-up eyes yield to a natural look, pierced ears give way to pierced noses, perms lose ground to straightened hair—all such styles can change in a few years or even a few weeks in a commercially driven culture such as the United States. People may either resist or follow a fad for both political and aesthetic reasons; reasons for disparaging universal marks of beauty in favor of the opposite must be even more compelling than those for complying with fashion. In this essay I hope to answer several questions: Other things being equal, why are the lightest women considered the most beautiful? Why have Caucasian women preferred dark skin during the past century?5 What does tanning mean in the context of current beauty norms? I argue that sun tanning is deeply tied to questions of race, class, and gender in ways that make this behavior a reflection of women’s struggle to define themselves in twentieth-century Euro-American culture. The Universal Desire for Light Marc Lappe is correct when he points out that “the adornment and beautification of the skin is a fundamental cultural need.”6 Changing our skin color may be one of the earliest human decorative acts. Recently, scientists discovered that South African women altered their body color with makeup made from “reddish or pinkish-brown” crushed rock as early as 164,000 years ago.7 Whether through tattooing, piercing, dying, or applying makeup, humans have sought to beautify themselves by altering their skin, usually in ways that heighten their sexual attractiveness.8 Furthermore, nearly all animals sunbathe. Although scientists are not sure why, William Hamilton notes, “one is tempted to conclude that the advantage [sunbathing] provides, whatever it may be, is available to all animal life.”9 Scientists know that some humans desire to lie in the sun or in a tanning booth because they are getting high on the experience. In fact, researchers at Wake Forest University have shown that one can be addicted to the endorphin production that is triggered by exposure to UV light, explaining why tanners sometimes report, “It makes me feel alive,” “It makes me feel like there’s nothing that can go wrong,” and “I always felt better about myself.”10 Exposure to UV light, either from the sun or in a booth, also makes us feel sexier.11 These biochemical changes may also explain why humans in all cultures have consistently worshipped the sun. However, despite these physical reasons for being attracted to being in the sun and a deeply ingrained desire to change skin color, humans have universally rejected the aesthetic of tanned women—in every ethnic [3.145...