Tanned Vs Fair Skin, Your Bet?

Skin is the largest part of the human body, so it is not unusual that cosmetic products are the largest selling products worldwide.  From head to toe we are covered with skin, and to maintain a great and glowing skin we have these tons of regimens and rituals to make it more healthier.

What about the skin color?  Racial types were categorized by color…

• Brown
• White
• Black
• Yellow
• Red

It’s weird how the skin was used to categorize people of their race and social status during the earlier times.  Now, those colors were reduced to tanned or fair, or simply black or white.  What is weird about it is that, more and more people now indicates beauty through one’s skin, not just the color but the texture.

Tanned?

Crazy as it is, growing up in an Asian society we normally have brown skin (naturally tanned as they say), and women strives to have a really fair colored skin.  Buying whitening skin products are really popular in the Philippines and travelling Southeast Asia, they(other Asian countries) have the same thinking when it comes to skin.  Fairer skin symbolizes social status and beauty.

Traditional bath tools were pumice, loofah, or face towel to scrub the whole body while taking a bath.  Lathering soap and scrubbing with one of the tools mentioned above helps the skin healthier and smoother, removing dead skin cells, excess oils and dirt that causes body odour is the trademark of Philippine shower routine.

Or Fair Skin?

On the other hand, from Western and European countries they have the opposite.  In Milan, I saw the Italian women spend heaps of money for fake tans!  Also, they spend too much time sunbathing under the sun.  Theyhave reasons though…  Crazy it was for me, but living in Milan, I need to do the same thing whenever the sun comes up.  Why?  They have winter season that is freezing cold most of the year (only 4 months of sunny months), and sunbathing helps your body to cope up with the freezing temperature on winter times.  Not to mention tans look amazing in those countries as they are not common to them.

I reckon, human is just uncontented being wanting to have what they don’t have thinking it is better than what they have.  But I realize, and also to back up the things I learned from my sociology in college that our body changes and adapts to its environment.  Tanned skin has more ‘melanin’ in it that protects the body from the harsh heat of the sun, which is why it is common to people living in tropical countries like Southeast Asia.

From myself as the experiment, my skin changes really quick depending on the place climate and weather conditions.  I get easily tanned, and easily turn to fair skinned at winter weather.  So, Tanned Vs Fair Skin, Your Bet?  I don’t think you need to bet, they are both beautiful in contrasting ways.