Unsolicited skin care advice, got to love it...

[ThePhoneGoddess]

Count me in with the too-pale-to-tan crowd. I'm Scottish/English/Dutch/Cherokee. On the rare occasions I wear foundation I mix it with a slight amount of white face paint to get the proper color.

My Mother sold Mary Kay for years and she made me take lessons on how to apply makeup and crap growing up. One of the most useful lessons I got was from this awesome gay guy who did makeup for Hollywood starlets. He explained to me that basically, skin is either cool toned (about 15% of the population) or various shades of warm toned (about 85% of the population).

Cool toned skin has pink undertones, while warm toned skin has yellow or orange undertones, so when cool-toned people tan, they don't turn yellow, they just turn darker pink. Cool toned people usually have very fair skin, dark hair and light colored eyes. They are also more likely to sufffer from Rosacea.

Yeah, I'm a veritable fount of useless knowledge.

[yomiko]

The problem is we were born 100 years too late. If we were around in the Victorian era we would be worshipped for our pale beauty.

The issue all has to do with a life of leisure. As mentioned before, way back when, being tanned meant working in the fields and being a peasant while the idle rich could stay inside and do nothing at all. Being pale was a sign of social standing. There are still some societies which hole to that ideal today.

Later, the idle rich skied during the winter and vacationed in the islands getting a tan while the working masses stayed pale at the glow of the computer screen. So tanned became the new 'it' standard.

Now with the advent of spray-on tans and the like, I think plastic surgery is the barometer.

[protege]

Norwegian/German/Irish over here...and I usually get fried during the summer. Even with sunscreen, I still get burnt. Last summer, vacation was interesting. Not only did I get burnt, but I started peeling too. By the time we left the beach and drove home, I looked like I'd been painted multiple colors.

[Posture Moll]

"And *you* need to learn some manners, sir/madam."

I, too, am a little porcelain-skinned chick and wouldn't change it for the world.

[Nayeli_Sabia]

I hate customers who feel they have the right to comment on our personal appearance just because we are serving them.

How would she have reacted if you told her she needed a nose job?

"I don't know why you're so offended maam. I thought we were intimate enough with each other to discuss these things."

I have long hair(waist length, trying for knee length). It drives me nuts when people try and insist that I donate it for Locks of Love. They are great, I support them, but not with MY hair. I happen to like it long. One time, after someone was very rudely telling me I needed to donate my hair, another friend of mine pipped up "Are you going to donate your boobs to women who lost theirs to breast cancer?" She got all huffy and left.

I don't get why people seem to think they have the right to say things to others about their looks.



And as to the OP, I have a health paleness about me that i go out of my way to nurture. Pale is Beauty!

[Banrion]

Norwegian/German/Irish over here...and I usually get fried during the summer. Even with sunscreen, I still get burnt.

What SPF do you use? And do you reapply every 90 mins - 2 hours? I have successfully avoided a sunburn for 3 solid summers now using SPF between 45 & 70 and religiously applying every 90 mins or so. I am talking some days of 14+ hours out in the sun with no shade, and still no burns. You can see how pale I am in the photo album. I thought for a long time it was impossible to avoid, now I know better, the sunscreen lies when it says for 4+ hours.

[Boozy]

Looks like we need to have a contest to see who is the palest member of CS. Winner gets to hunt down Marxfan's customer and bitch-slap her.

I think I got a shot at the big prize, folks. I'm about as white as they come. If I wear shorts before applying self-tanner, the sight of my legs will give children nightmares for years to come.

[Banrion]

I think I got a shot at the big prize, folks. I'm about as white as they come. If I wear shorts before applying self-tanner, the sight of my legs will give children nightmares for years to come.

I'm only white in the summer, in the winter I am closer to a shade of blue

[angelicafire]

I burnt once this summer through my clothes. I had on khaki pants and a dark red polo shirt AND SPF 50 all over my body.

Whenever I'm referencing the relationship between the sun and I, I describe it as "it's like putting a fork in a toaster... there's a lot of sparks and a lot of crying."

[morgana]

I'm what George Carlin calls "phosphorescent Irish". Except for the rosacea.

I'll have to try the "add white face paint to the foundation" trick.

[GingerBiscuit]

I once burned having forgotten my sunscreen for half an hour at 4 pm. You wouldn't think anyone could burn that easy- but! Huge patch of burn on kym thigh that took three days to heal and is still slightly darker then the rest of my skin. Watching THAT part of my leg like a gawk in 10 years.

Anyway, I am milky pale with a faint pink blush at the cheeks. I never tan, or use fake tans and my skin is great. I'd rather be pale and interesting than look like one person I work with, who is pretty much orange and looks about ten years older because of her sun-worship. I like the slight biscuity-glow I get, I want no more than that.

Ooh, on the makeup front, I don't know if I'm allowed to post a link but there's a couple of sites who do makeup pale enough for me- in non-bunny tested and nasty-crud free formulas, no less, and they are REALLY good.
Search for Meow Cosmetics and Lily Lolo.

[Shabo]

non-bunny tested

Technically, every commercial product is animal tested. It's mandated by law. However, the companies can get away with saying they don't use testing by buying results of tests with either similar ingredients or the same ingredients. They cover their bums and get to say they don't do animal testing, because technically, it's not them doing the testing. And the companies may not endorse the animal testing, but like I said, it's mandated by law.

As far as being pale... I'm not translucent, but I'm definitely fair. There is a lot of Irish and British in me, and even though I'm half Portuguese... well, I still got the short end of the stick in skin color. My arms are a nice shade, but my legs? They look like I stole them off a mannequin or something, Although I do have "warm" skin, so that helps a little bit (you just can't see the olive skin shades until I tan a bit).

[GingerBiscuit]

[QUOTE=Shabo;208406]Technically, every commercial product is animal tested. It's mandated by law. However, the companies can get away with saying they don't use testing by buying results of tests with either similar ingredients or the same ingredients. They cover their bums and get to say they don't do animal testing, because technically, it's not them doing the testing. And the companies may not endorse the animal testing, but like I said, it's mandated by law.

QUOTE]
Depends.
There are many companies that don't test, or buy ingredients from places that test. Yes, the ingredients were tested in the distant past, but not in the last five years. In the uk a lot of companies have a 'five year cut off date', in that they don't use, or buy ingredients from, companies that have tested in the last five years.

The ingredients where testing is mandated by law are new, previously untested ingredients. Ingredients with a history of 'safe use' don't legally have to be tested in europe, at least, although the REACH policy may well change all that.

Would be interested to take this discussion firther, but not while we're hijacking the thread.

[tangrid]

And as to the OP, I have a health paleness about me that i go out of my way to nurture. Pale is Beauty!

Amen to that. Scot-Irish on my dad's side, German/English on my Mom's. Not only can I not tan, I can drink like a tank I've worn jeans/long pants for about as long as I remember, so if I ever go swimming, I tend to blind people with my shiny white legs. One year I went to DC and visited some family in Annapolis. We went sailing, and I didn't think to wear sunscreen. Long story short, we got stranded on the water for two hours, and I got to walk around DC with bluejeans over a lobster-red sunburn... ouch.

As for people who think that only tanned women are attractive, to hell with them. I happen to be a sucker for fair skinned women, and if she's a redhead to boot? I may as well toss in the towel, I don't have a chance, lol.

[GingerBiscuit]

I read an article in a 'beauty' magazine that said 'studies show that tanned women look younger and are percieved as more attractive.'

Hmmm. Cynical marketing ploy to get women to tan more, and therefore wrinkle more (sun-damage being the worst thing you can do for your skin after smoking), and sell more anti-aging creams?