In the field of human biodiversity, there recently has been more attention on color variation, such as Rushton and Templer’s “Do pigmentation and the melanocortin system modulate aggression and sexuality in humans as they do in other animals?”
And as noted by Peter Frost and others, there seems to be same-race variation in pigmentation. Both among Europeans and North Asians, one finds that the upper classes tend to be fairer skinned, and the lower classes darker skinned. Think of the “fair princess” (beauty = fair skin) and epithets throughout literature, such as “white-armed Andomache” or the fact that fair-skinned women are often thought of as more virtuous.
Globally, women will go to great lengths to make themselves appear more fair, as skin-lightening products are some of the most-sold beauty products in the world. In short, surveying history, one could say fairness is adaptive; swarthiness, maladaptive, at least as they concern recent post-hunter-gatherer societies. Is fairness part of the domestication of Europeans and North Asians (as with foxes)?
Why, then, in the West, the radical changes of the past 40 years or so? Why is tanning among white women now considered hip? Why do some white women intentionally try to make themselves look darker?
In short, one could say much in the West is now dysgenic; whatever the media (and those who have real power) prescribe is probably contrary to reality.
Also note that the rise of the tanning phenomenon coincides with the sexual revolution. Does tanning of women denote sexual availability? Are tan women perceived as being sexually easier?
I have no hard data on this but from my experience (of frequently going out for a decade in major American and European cities) guys internally view fair women as marriage material, and overly tanned women as sluts. (If this is true, this could be a powerful weapon for women looking to snag a husband.)
Thoughts?
Further Reading:
Peter Frost on Ashkenazis and the vilification of blondes, Skin color and the menstrual cycle, and the trading of fair-skinned women.
“Human Nature vs. Hollywood Political Correctness”
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Well, I just read this article a few days ago… I didn’t realize till now it was from 2008 though…
Tanning = White Trash?
http://newsblaze.com/story/20080423062911tsop.nb/topstory.html
I just found this from this year though…
The Hollywood tan loses its luster
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/05/24/death-of-the-tan-emma-stone-jessica-chastain-taylor-swift/2148259/
Anyway, I don’t think so… getting sunlight is especially healthy for white people but some have taken it overboard… it signifies health unless it’s way too dark or fakely orange(how many fat/obese people do you see tan?)… it also can help aesthetically in neutralizing the contrasts that occur in skin imperfections and between the skin and clothes…
yes i’d agree, i think it would connote in this day in age, the health of a person. being in that they do not spend all day in the dark factory or coal mine or office and are “natural”. but yes it is clearly a trend/fetish as well and utterly ridiculous. also tanned (not the spray shit) white women will still appear paler than negros and mullatos and other muds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning#Cultural_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppertone_girl
Are women who tan sluts? Maybe if it’s an American trend. I guess it’s the whole “tanning” trend vs. natural tan. And the class (SES, culture combined) thing is another point, because it starts at the lightest/fairest, flows to medium, and ends at the darkest skin tones.
I’d say that a white American woman who tans and looks orange, in addition to her fake blonde hair dye, doesn’t look compatible and looks odd. Her looks doesn’t match. It would be best for light hair to combine itself with fair skin, and dark hair with tanned skin (if it’s natural).
European women have fair skin, mestizo women (Hispanic) have tanned skin and mulatta women (Hispanic) have caramel skin. Asian women skin tones range from fair (e.g. Chinese, Japanese) to yellow (e.g. Thai, Vietnamese) to brown (e.g. Indian, Bangladesh).
Amerindians have red undertones, but they aren’t a great global population (they’re minorities) and often overlooked for good reason. Black African women have the darkest skin out of all women on average and in general.
This is what Peter Frost notes on the topic:
Darker women were seen in some European societies as being more erotic, possibly because of the association between skin color and sex drive.
I suspect that there is a relationship between tanning and “sociosexuality” (promiscuity). I don’t know of any datasets, however.
Never understood why women would want to tan.
White is beautiful and the whiter the higher value.
Simple truth.
Aldous Huxley’s 30s novel “Eyeless in Gaza” weaves back and forth in time around a surreal set piece in which the hero and his girlfriend are tanning atop the roof.
Anybody who’s read more than one Huxley novel will understand how he has an uncanny nose for the perverse [NB: I’d have to say, Huxley IS rather perverse]. There’s a vast deal of evocation of the girl’s solipsistic sensuality, a kind of D. H. Lawrence triumphalism in “freeing” herself from mere rational thought and all that inhibited garbage.
I haven’t picked the thing up in over a decade, but I think I’m giving the correct gist.
So there’s that, a kind of hedonic element to sunbathing (I consider this a kind of delusive hedonism–convincing themselves it’s actually pleasurable instead of uncomfortable–but I burn easily so perhaps that’s just me).
Then there’s the demotic angle– I mean the internalized demotics of it: a sort of masochistic self-congratulation on doing something obviously lower-class and trashy. Surely Coco Chanel understood. “Prole drift”, at least in women and probably in homosexuals and perhaps in everybody– is sexualized, self-titillating, as in the bad Romans in Suetonius and Juvenal.
Some of this may genuinely sound arcane to most contemporaries, but even so, every girl understands you can’t really read on a beach. To choose to idle away sunbathing is inherently anti-intellectual and, at some level, bimbofied.
A light tan looks healthy, hides small variations in skin color, and makes the person look more less fat. A pale color to the face is associated with being sick or sickly. I look tons better after a few days in the sun. I still try to avoid tanning because it is bad in the long-run.
I don’t much understand women you see who have extremely dark tans from tanning beds, it looks horrible.
I disagree also about having skin match hair and eyes. Of course a bad bleach job on someone way too dark to be a natural blonde looks bad. However I think blond hair/light tan and black hair/white skin look the best, in part because they are rarer. Brown eyes on a natural blonde is especially attractive.
In Medieval times, most labor was in farm fields or other outdoor occupations. Being plump and fair-skinned was a signal that you were prosperous and didn’t do physical labor.
Today, most “labor” is indoors and sedentary. Being thin and fair-skinned is a signal that you are prosperous and don’t do physical labor.
Interesting viewpoint.
Most prole whites I see are morbidly pale and never get any sun. By contrast upper class people play tennis, go yachting, go to the beach, and so in recent history actually a tan is associated with the upper class, at least in places like England. There is also a strong tanning culture in Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia, that crosses all class boundaries. In any case, it is healthy and it looks good. People who avoid tanning to “look whiter” are either of dubious ethnicity to begin with, or are being unnecessarily paranoid.
The claim about “fairer” being “tamer” and stretching across the whole white and north Asian races is a bit silly, because men were expected to be tan. In Western culture it’s almost always been seen as disgraceful for men to be pale and not tanned because it meant you were spending all your time indoors with the women and children. In ancient Greece therefore a tan was a sign that you were spending your time as a free man should, hunting outside, in the gym, preparing for war, campaigning, etc.; in Plato’s Republic and elsewhere there are contemptuous references to fat oligarchs who are pale skinned and win only disdain. So it’s proper for women maybe to be pale, but men should spend time outside and be tan.
The people most concerned about not being tan are the middle class/accountant/rug merchant type ethnics like Armenians, because in their culture being tan is indeed associated with manual labor outside and the lower classes. And like middle and lower middle class people everywhere, Armenians, Chinese, etc., etc., are very afraid of being confused for the lower classes and with showing that they don’t engage in manual labor. Among the European upper classes this concern doesn’t exist, so they freely tan, which is a sign instead that you’re enjoying the outdoors. Middlemen ethnicities who spend all day indoors working in commerce and are very worried about their status will not tan. Similarly in places like Brazil the lower middle class generally tries not to tan because they’re afraid they’ll be confused for the (darker-skinned) lower classes, but this concern doesn’t exist in the European upper class, who spends all day at the beach.
There is no tanning culture among Eastern Europeans and Russians. Ditto about Germans. Now, I can buy and understand tanning among the Mediterranean (Southern Europe). That’s a different place, culture and populace.
No, tanning culture is quite popular among Germans, Russians, and East Europeans. Steve Sailer has commented on this, and the birth of the nudist movement in Germany also. Scandinavians also can generally get quite deep brown tans.
Sometimes I think this whole internet HBD thing is people from the swamps of Ulster who burn if they get out from permanent cloud cover. Not everyone in Europe is a bog creature. Europeans love to tan. And historically men are supposed to be tan, for the reasons I said above. If you spend time outside you will get tan.
Get some culture, hambone.
Doing outside sports doesn’t necessarily translate to “tanning culture”. The sun isn’t that intense in Northern Europe as it is in Southern Europe for example. For example (and this is but an anecdote) I once was in London, England and even when the light of the sun was out (it wasn’t cloudy or rainy), I didn’t feel any heat from the sun and I didn’t get any tan.
English isles are under permanent cloud cover almost and so a lot of the people who are from there can’t tan…they didn’t evolve to, and will burn in the sun. In Russia, Scandinavia, Germany, and Eastern Europe the summer sun is very strong. And it’s not just outside sports, there is an active tanning culture in that part of the world. Look up Sailer’s comments on this as well. The English isles peoples are almost the only ones in Europe who can’t tan, but there are so many Irish in the US that the impression here is that whites can’t or don’t like to tan, which isn’t the case. And even in England, those of Germanic or Viking descent tan well.
Tanning is largely an American phenomenon. I lived in Europe for a couple years (mostly Germany and France). True, people will do sports outside, but the “tanning” culture is largely an American phenomenon.
I lived in both and it’s not an American phenomenon, most Americans don’t tan at all and look like crap, that includes brown people who also look like crap if they stay out of the sun.
1) Women know that tanning is a cheap way to boost their SMV. Scars, bad skin, blemish’s can be mitigated (though not completely hidden) by a deep tan. It makes them look slightly thinner and therefore slightly more attractive; basically just one more tool in their arsenal of deception to land a mate significantly higher then themselves. Even if it’s just for a ONS.
2) Plus, women are sheep. They see celebrities tan and do it themselves. They might not know why they do it, but to them it just ‘feels’ right. Women are a hive mind.
3) There’s also a racial possibility that lighter skinned girl’s in the west are ashamed of their white ethnicity, or are trying to disguise themselves to protect themselves. The white man has been demonized and emasculated for the last few decades, it’s entirely possible white girl’s, subconsciously working off skin colour, are tanning to appear less racist or, disturbingly, to protect themselves. If they walk around pale and snow skinned, they’re white, but a deep brown tan means they might be able to pass themselves off as a different race (irrational, I know, but if it is a subconscious response then it’s a possibility). The white man is not viewed as a bastion of strength any more, and the glorified masculine cultures in the west are the thug blacks, Mexicans, Muslims and Africans. The darker a girl is, the less likely she will be to be assaulted for her white heritage.
Personally I think it’s a combination of 1 and 2.
#3 is bizarre; are women dying their hair darker colors now as opposed to blonde? please…
Tanning was started by the French fashion designer Coco Chanel.
Homosexual behavior was started by Oscar Wilde, or was it the designer Versace.
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