Under the Skin

I’ve been quasi-joking for years that true maturity comes from accepting the hair you actually have, and not trying to make it look like something you have not. The self-inflicted cowlick I created in kindergarten with my little safety scissors made achieving the perfect center-parted, feathered ‘do of my teenage dreams damn near impossible. I know some women would feel that sentiment way down in their marrow, but in candor, in my own case the crux of my adulthood will always be the acquiescence of something else; this pallid wrapper I call skin.

I am hopelessly Caucasian, folks. I’m a ghost, almost. It does make shopping for make-up in the department store fairly uncomplicated. “Do you carry Irish Death-Pallor? No? How about Clown White, then?” Whatever color (or lack thereof) lies at the far left-hand side of the little rainbow of skin tones on the display, I will have one of those, please. I am but a half-shade darker than the see-through lady in the life-science lab.

It has been the bane of my existence, since I was old enough to be aware of skin color at all. If I had a dime for every minute I’ve spent tormenting myself over my utter lack of pigmentation, I would happily pay off the National Deficit and buy a round of Health Care for the house. After all, I was a child of the 70s, a teenager in the 80s, before anyone knew what “melanoma” meant. My friends “laid out” daily, basting themselves with an ominous-looking concoction of baby oil and iodine, while I lay beside them, sizzling like a L’il Smoky.

In elementary school, our family belonged to a German athletic club in south KC called Turner’s where I swam and blistered and peeled all summer. I longed to show off a severe tan line like my friend Kim, who would get brown just going out to the mailbox. After a long day at the pool with little or no sunscreen between me and disaster, instead of a tan, my freckles got darker, while the rest of my skin turned bright pink, like the inside of a watermelon.

The older I got, this became less of a nuisance and more of a handicap. I hated the way I looked in gym shorts, and actually resorted to a ghastly type of leg makeup as a cheerleader in high school, lest I blind the crowd with my pasty herkeys. My best friend Molly and I attempted to use a prehistoric-looking sun lamp that we unearthed in my dad’s closet, and while I didn’t manage to get any kind of color, we did both manage to burn our eyes. Not the eyelids, mind you. Eyeballs. Yeah. I know. The only thing that eventually stopped the screaming was her mother putting wet socks full of potato peels on our faces, which is some very complicated Irish irony.

Eventually, I was in such a shame spiral that I wouldn’t even put on a swimsuit, not even around my closest friends, not even in the depths of August. I had to decide if I wanted to sit by the pool and slowly melt into the deck furniture, or jump in fully clothed. The first time, it was funny. The tenth time, it was just sad.

It never ceased to amaze me how cruel and thoughtless people could be about it. “Jesus, girl, get a tan!” Like I hadn’t been trying! Like I had any control over it whatsoever! If we were taught not to judge others by the color of their skin, shouldn’t we extend that same principle to the entire spectrum, not just the darker end? They never would have said to the blind kid “Jesus, dude! Get some glasses!”

At 18, I was lured by the siren song of the tanning bed, when the stylist I went to got one of the first in the area, and offered me a freebie. Error! Danger, Will Robinson! It was like microwaving a Ball Park hotdog. Even at the lowest setting, for the shortest possible time, every square millimeter of my poor little hide itched, and I scratched like a tweaker for days, going through tube after tube of cortisone cream, and falling asleep fully clothed on my driveway, because for some odd reason, the retained heat make the itch stop long enough to sleep. I swear I’d have been medium-rare, had you sliced me open.

That was the last straw for me. I had had it with all the grief and the drudgery and the pain of trying to cram myself into someone else’s shoes. It occurred to me that I would never be mistaken for a Baywatch girl, and started each day with a coating of SPF 30.

Then, Hallelujah! Science came through for me in the form of the miracle I call self-tanner. I recall buying my first bottle at the Dot Drugstore on 95th and Blue Ridge, and saying an impassioned prayer on the drive home. A few days later, someone had the balls to tell me I was orange. I didn’t care. It was a color.

Practice makes perfect, or perhaps passable. After years of training, I have mastered the art of the faux glow. It will never be as good as the real thing to some folks, but as it’s my only option, I’m 100% onboard. I have even fallen under the spell of the Mystic Tan®. (That’s right, motherfucker, I said ®!) Truly the Holy Grail for the pasty people of this world. Not often, mind you; my broke ass is usually a white ass, unless there’s a special occasion on the books.

The upside of all this is that after 25 years of diligence with the sunscreen and much care and effort, I am told at least once a week how beautiful my skin is. Imagine that! Pale little me! All the girls I laid out with, who looked pityingly at my colorlessness, now may have wished they had done the same.

My skin and I have declared a truce. I will not lie and tell you that I love being the whitest girl on Earth just in order to wrap up this post with a nice happy ending. I still wish, deep down, that I could throw on a short skirt on a whim and go out in public. My vanity, with its mean-girl voice, tells me I’m a sightless cave-dwelling fish. But at least now, as a growed-up, I can tell it to go fuck itself.