Tans are stupid. Very stupid. I'm not sure about the rest of the world but Australia has the hole in the ozone layer right above it. We have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. There's a town in one of out states (Townsville in Queensland) that trumps the rest of the country.

The only way I can see some one thinking it's attractive is it's a sign of either:

A. Being a sport player
B. Being a tradesman (They earn a lot of money in Australia).

My girlfriends friends are the typical spolit attractive bitches that 95% of society either hates, or sucks up their ass. Their hobbies include shopping, tanning and clubbing. People copy these girls.

How is slowly killing your self a hobby? Fuck.

I tan, so, fucking, easily. Yet I still refuse to do it, why? German heritage, so very prone to skin cancer. I'm pale, yet I still get girls.

So why do people feel the need to tan?

I see so many people asking for advice "How do I look better?" response "Get some sun".

Most really attractive catwalk models are tall, skinny and pale. They set the fashion, so why hasn't being pale caught on?

I'm deathly pale, I look like a heroin addict, but that's not what I'm talking about when I say pale. I mean some one a few shades darker than me, with a bit of colour to their skin, but not this awful disgusting brown colour.

/rant

Hmm. Thought about this one, even googled "why are tans attractive" and Im still at a loss. My only thought is that tans are attractive for the same reason that people with the most mixed genes are attractive. I saw some Discovery Channel show where they had a computer model of a face that more-or-less every man in the world would find attractive... looked at lot like Jessica Alba I remember

Could be because it reduces the appearance of skin imperfections, and gives off a "glow".

I'm pale as fuck, and I couldn't tan if I tried to.

Pale people ftw.

Haha, that guy has sunglasses to prevent the sun from damaging his eyes.

I'm very pale, and a lot of my friends think its crazy that I don't tan or fake tan. I get quite a bit of sun but I don't really brown.

I would prefer to be a few shades darker instead of being ghostly white but really its not something I'd put the effort into.

I don't really have a preference of weather I like guys tanned or pale - not something I really notice.

Its not really that tans attractive its just for some people there skin is too white looking. Some people can pull this off fine though. Its more just how you skin looks. Also has to do with hair color.

Alot of good looking blondes, arent really that tan, there skin is just this sort of honey color, not dark though.

But I think all sorts of skin color is hot.

Getting a tan isn't about being dark, just not albino.

Most normal people look orange/yellow, not white, and as we all unfortunately know, attractive = conformity.

Pale people look gross.

Like they're diseased or albino.

Nothing hotter than an even gold tan.
<3

Well, coming from a place where actually most people are tan, I prefer white, pale girls without question. I still find some tanned chicks attractive, but yet I prefer fair skinned females.

hahaha, i'm pale as all fuck, and my friend (who's from mexico) told me that if i went to mexico i would be considered ultra hot coz i'm so pale and everyone else is so brown.

But seriously, the whole tanned thing is a bit beyond me. My best friend is insanely brown, but it looks really good on her so i suppose it doesn't really matter. But fake/spray tans i find are just stupid. And when it starts washing off and it looks all patchy it is just disgusting.

Pale on guys usually just looks unhealthy, diseased, or otherwise subpar. Tanned looks healthier and stronger. Guess which is more attractive.

Some girls can pull it off nicely though.

I do REALLY, REALLY hate fake and spray tans though, they always looks like shit and horribly fake. Bah.

Ironically the pale people are the healthier ones.

Hmmm, in the mainstream "metro, guys that wear fluro, have mohawks and mullets at the same time, do steroids, and have wingmen" I'm considered really ugly.

To the idie rocker kids I'm gold.

So I guess it's all about your scene. I love having dark circles under my eyes and being pale. All I need is to join a band, start a healthy cocaine/heroin habit and I'm complete.

To clear things up I can appreciate a tan, it really suits some people. But I loathe all the people who actively tan.

When I wanted to fit in I went to a solarium for a few sessions, when I came back for my second session the woman was amazed that my tan had come out that much. So this isn't me envying those kids, it's just loathing their stupidity induced conformity..

It used to be that pale skin was preferred since it meant that you didn't have to perform outdoor labor. Therefore marking you as being more cultured or of higher class.

Tanning is considered attractive now because it is associated with an 'active lifestyle' or means you have lots of money and leisure time to go on vacations.

I'm fairly tan.
I didn't try to get it either so it's not even.
But really, I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

I like being pale.
I have German heritage too, but I don't tan I just burn and then go back to my pasty self. I've never found it a real hinderance in being found attractive by others.

I prefer pale girls. I know, I'm weird. If their skin is naturally tan then that's fine, but otherwise it just isn't as attractive.

Hey Arquin, are you from Townsville?

I live there at the moment.

From a historical and British perspective tans showed you had enough money not to work and could afford to go to expensive hot places. So tans became attractive because, if you believe evolutionary psychology, we are attracted to people who show their wealth and power. However this kinda gets stuck at why so many women have tans, maybe celebrity culture? And then there is the biological reasons, slight tans/being in the sun gives off endorphins, which makes us happy, and affects how other people perceive us.

All I know is, being Tango-ed is fucking disgusting. There is a town near me which has girls permanently being orange, and they are as shallow as puddle and as thick as a plank. Ergh.

I dont find tans attractive at all.


Based on physcial attraction alone, I'd say they're pretty unappealing, to me. But that is of course just personal oppinion.

Hot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/raveyoyo/hot.jpg

Hotter:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/raveyoyo/hotter.jpg

Hottest:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/raveyoyo/hottest.jpg



Allthough I'm a bit confused because I find the guy in this picture rather attractive despite the fact he's pretty much everything I dont like (ie, overly muscular, tanned and) BUT OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT UNIFORM
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v225/raveyoyo/do-able.jpg

im very pale
my skin has never tanned
even when i was traveling around India for years i never tanned
personally i think its got something to do with the extraordinary and exotic because in India where everyone is tanned it's pale people that are found attractive

My personal opinion on this:

women can choose
men cannot

There are women who would actually be less attraktive when tanned
There is no such thing with men. Every pale man can improve his appearance by getting tanned. Unless of course being pale is essential for the whole look (e.g. goth).

HEY!!!!!

I prefer pale girls...Always have, and as far as I'm concerned, always will.

Not sure why, although I do like contrast.

heavy tan lines make me laugh.

Of all the things about my race that has confounded me over the years, I never understood this chase to be darker nonsense. Especially the asshole racists dogging people of color, and then spend such significant time trying to get darker themselves. I kinda, sorta, somewhat understand northerners trying to attain a "base" before heading off to the beaches of Florida. But laying outside or going to a tanning salon, just for the sake of making yourself darker? Go pick up litter on the highway in your bikini if you are so incensed to pursue superficial nonsense benefitting NO ONE. (yeah yeah, spew all you want about how it makes you look hotter....and enjoy dying a painful death to skin cancer 40 years from now)

One of the greatest death scenes in any movie was when those 2 bimbos got fried in their tanning beds in "Final Destination 3". If only life could dish out such justified irony.....

Yea, I never understood racist people who go tanning either.

I also can't understand why anyone would pay to give themselves skin cancer.

Fake tans are retarded. People who spend money on cancer are retarded. But if a guy has a natural tan from working outside a lot or something like that I think it's attractive. Fake tans are obvious though.

For me it's the same as fake muscle. Muscle that's been built for the sheer purpose of looking badass. Not to say I like gangly guys, it's just more attractive when they're muscles from actually working.

Tans are gross. I don't mind if someone is naturally a bit darker skinned.... like they are mixed race or something.... but if someone who should naturally be pale goes and gets a tan it just looks awful. But then I would like pale people... I'm celtic.

Basically this.

I prefer pale skin, but tan's can be passable. Depends what the person looks like.

they aren't. a lot of people find them fucking sick

Quick explanation:

Pale skin used to be attractive, as working outside and getting a tan was what the lower classes had to do, back when the world was warmer. Look at period dramas and other such crap where the women walk around with little parasols.

Now it's the opposite, people with pale skin can't afford to fly to nice sunny places on holiday. So tan now reflects wealth.

That's just a theory though.

Tans are retarded. I want to see someone's natural skin colour. The only excuse for a tan IMO is if you're from a desert or something.

There's a book called "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" that has a chapter on why tans are attractive. I haven't gotten to that part yet though.

A sign of health, plain and simple.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a78/EssJay200E/HandTan1.jpg
Tell me that isn't sexy.

Tans are retarded. I want to see someone's natural skin colour. The only excuse for a tan IMO is if you're from a desert or something.

I disagree, in the summer I had a wicked tan, only because I was outside ALL the time. I still have ridiculous tan lines from it. I tan like crazy, I never burn I just get suppperrr dark. I can't help it though, so I don't give a shit.

Agreed. Especially with blondes. It just looks retarted and fucked up when you see blondes with an unnatural tan. They are a lot more sexy with pale skin, and that way they don't have boob stripes either. All of ones body parts have to corrospond to one another. This is why all natural is the way to go. A natural blonde with pitch black hair just looks fucked up because it doesn't fit in with the facial features. A tan doesn't fit into the hair of a blonde, as blondes come from the north.

Your theory is good though, that it reflects wealth.

Agreed. Especially with blondes. It just looks retarted and fucked up when you see blondes with an unnatural tan. They are a lot more sexy with pale skin, and that way they don't have boob stripes either. All of ones body parts have to corrospond to one another. This is why all natural is the way to go. A natural blonde with pitch black hair just looks fucked up because it doesn't fit in with the facial features. A tan doesn't fit into the hair of a blonde, as blondes come from the north.

Your theory is good though, that it reflects wealth.

You know this is sexy:
http://shell.reverse.net/~sil/vista/ganguro-girl-phone.jpg

Basically what naive_wisdom said. I learned about it in a class on the Caribbean. Around the turn of the century and later, cheaper and faster travel on ships and airplanes allowed people to travel greater distances to vacation. People would go to warmer places near water because they believed that the climate had healing properties. At first, because they believed that the sun was harmful and tan skin was unattractive (the sign of a poor person that works outside), "bathing" was essentially wading around in water fully clothed. At some point, the conventional wisdom was shifted to believe that sunlight is actually good for your health. So, wealthy people would travel to sunny places to tan and when they went home, their darker skin became a status marker to be emulated by everyone else.

Basi People would go to warmer places near water because they believed that the climate had healing properties

because clearly, no one associated tropical climates with malaria and other nigger diseases

because clearly, no one associated tropical climates with malaria and other nigger diseases


Tourism in the Caribbean started in the 1800's. In depth studies of malaria linking them to mosquitoes in tropical climates didn't start until the early 1900's. Therefore, early tourists visiting the Caribbean for the health benefits were oblivious to the danger of malaria.

Therefore, early tourists visiting the Caribbean for the health benefits were oblivious to the danger of malaria.

are you fucking stupid? europeans have known about the dangers of tropical diseases since they began exploring the region

Europeans as in a few researchers and scientists. The common person in the 1800's knew shit about tropical diseases.

Let me remind you the Caribbean was originally settled by Europeans, so they must've known about the diseases. It wasn't until the late seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds that the slave rebellions occured in the Caribbean, and some places they never occured since slavery was abolished in the British empire in the 1830s. It must've been around the 1830s that most whites left the Caribbean. However many caribbean countries still have a high percentage of half breeds.

How could they not be aware of the disease? They might not be aware of the causes, but they'll be aware that you can get sick down there.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0932661.html

1897

Ronald Ross, a British officer in the Indian Medical Service, demonstrates that malaria parasites are transmitted via mosquitoes, although French army surgeon Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran identified parasites in the blood of a malaria patient in 1880. The treatment for malaria was identified much earlier (and is still used today). The Qinghao plant (Artemisia annua) was described in a Chinese medical treatise from the 2nd century BCE; the active ingredient, known as artemisinin, was isolated by Chinese scientists in 1971 and is still used today. The more commonly known treatment, quinine, was derived from the bark of a tree called Peruvian bark or Cinchona and was introduced to the Spanish by indigenous people in South America during the 17th century.



Bit of googling.
Some info for your argument.

Media, etc.

But don't be dissing brown people... im pretty brown - i dont tan all the time, nor do i think its that fucking sexy or strive to get darker - sometimes i wish i were paler. but some of us retain a tan for a long ass time. i can tan in the summer and stay tanned until.. well forever.

I prefer pale women, but it really doesn't matter if a girl is tanned, so long as it is a natural tan and she isn't intentionally trying to tan skin not genetically predisposed towards it(ie, I don't like white girls tanning, it's retarded).

Me personally, my dad was white and my mom half-Native American half-Mexican, so I have brown skin that tans really easily, and I have never had a sunburn in my life. I also live in Las Vegas, so it's pretty damn difficult to do anything outside half the year without tanning quite a bit. Although usually I just get a ridiculous farmer's tan, but this summer I might do some yardwork in my backyard with no shirt on, specifically so I actually get an even tan for my whole upper body. Never plan on going to a tanning salon though, that's just stupid.

I'm so white I practically glow in the dark.

I use self-tanning lotion a few times a week, but not enough to actually have a tan, just enough to make my skin less transparent and make me look alive.

There are few things that disgust me as much as those fake-bake hags who look like their orangy skin is going to crack and fall off. There's a girl in one of my classes whose daddy bought her a thousand tanning minutes (and boy does she use them), and when I look at her it brings me great satisfaction to imagine the wrinkles, tumors and sunspots that will make up her face when she's thirty.

i dont like most tans cause they look fake
most people over do it

and for you people that are blond DONT OVER TAN YOU LOOK CREEPY!!!!!!!!!!
but ghost white is a no too so a lil color is okay

I have north Italian heritage and my skin has a tiny bit of an olive tint/medium skintone (not nearly as dark as a sicilian but not as pale as an irish). I honestly do not find any woman who is darker than me attractive, and fair skinned girls who go tanning look like aliens!

The only place in the world where people go out of their way to tan is in countries full of self-hating white lemmings. Every other country in the world romanticizes European looks and white skin, because it is by far the most beautiful of all. The fantasy of every colored man is to have a porcelain skinned woman, even if she is fat or ugly.

this whole tanning craze is just another retarded fad, it'll pass.

Personally i hate tans,
I enjoy being white

I am a mixture of Welsh, English, and Irish heritage...I'm super-whitey. But I have a little color, not much, but enough to tell that I am alive.

I have a pretty dark tan. It's coz I tan incredibly easy. I love being tanned. I get compliments about my skin all the time, it rules. Also, thanks to my tan I never burn unless I'm in the Aussie sun for several hours with no sunscreen.

The general consensus here seems to be that tans are unhealthy... which is a load of shit. The people who get skin cancer are the ones that get sunburned (mostly pale people) or excessively tan.

I find tanned girls much more attractive as well (natural tan, not tan in a bottle). I'm not a victim of the media or whatever other bullshit a lot of people here seem to think anyone who likes tans seems to be, I just find darker skin much more appealing than pale.

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4339/p1100001ny6.jpg

I'm rocking the ghost white. Getting a tan probably would make me look and feel better.. but it's the middle of winter. Come summer, I'll do some fucking yard work and just more outside activities in general if I want a tan, not sit in a booth/get spray painted in the middle of winter.

The attractiveness of a tan varies from person to person. If they look like a different race because they spend so much time in a booth.. that's wrong. If they look well tanned after a summer of being outside.. that's fine.

Fuck tanning. I tan extremely easily to the point where I look really dark, and I don't get sunburn either, so it isn't like I have some sort of indicator which says "ok stop, you are gonna be looking like a douchebag for a while now".

...and it isn't like I am laying out in the sun either. Just being outside.

Oompa Loompa, doompaty doo...

If you look like an oompa loompa I will not talk to you.

My gf's pretty light and it looks great on her, but if she tanned naturally and her hair got a bit darker, it would also look sexy.

If she got a fake tan I'd be a little disappointed, but shit people, tans fade. She'd still be the same person I like. If getting a tan somehow made her into a stupid orange girl with glossy make up who blows everyone (ie, much of the north american female population) then we'd have a problem. If she was the same just a little more orange I wouldn't stop liking her.

I just got a woody thinking of my gf with tan lines.

I love my summers, and cross the equator as soon as it starts getting cold on either side (family in new zealand and spain).

Im not insanely brown or anything, but I admit, I do get quite a few girls.:)
Might not be the skin though.


http://i16.tinypic.com/89g7ed0.jpg
Note that this pic is taken in a dark room, so I look a bit darker than I am.

I LOVE brown skinned women. I have this thing for exotic women. Brown eyes + black hair + brown skin + round(ish) face = me in love.

I think it has something to do with opposites attracting since I'm the most typical white guy ever with blue eyes, white skin and light brown hair.

I'm surrounded by women that are pale as hell tho. Sucks living in northern-europe. And there are so many friggin blondes here.

More or less why I hate fake tans, they always look a) orange b) yellow c) painted gold d) painted bronze

Depending on initial skin tone, and method used to tan. A natural tan (which I like, just not an extreme) is a NATURAL balance of shades, that doesn't lean toward any of the above shades in particular, and it tends to look good on anyone, as long as they don't go totally nuts.

I love brown girls, I mean they look like chocolate... how can you resist a chick that looks like fucking candy? But I hate tans, I hate them no matter who gets them, the look fucking gross. Baking your ass in the sun or under a lamp is not attractive.

I'm surrounded by women that are pale as hell tho. Sucks living in northern-europe. And there are so many friggin blondes here.

This is the dope part about living in northern europe! Pale blondes FTW!

people have been tanning for ages i dont thin kits going anywhere but that doesnt change my prevoius statement

people have been tanning for ages i dont thin kits going anywhere but that doesnt change my prevoius statement

Uhhh, what do you mean? I am not aware of anyone going out of their way to tan themselves before the Industrial Revolution...

Uhhh, what do you mean? I am not aware of anyone going out of their way to tan themselves before the Industrial Revolution...

Um, I think the sun existed before then...

Pale was the fashion from the start of the industrial revolution though, but I'm sure a girl with some colour was more appealing even before that.

Um, I think the sun existed before then...

We are discussing tanning for the purposes of image enhancement, which given the scope of human history, is a very new phenomena. In agrarian societies, people with tans were seen as being lower-class because they had to work in the fields. So people strove towards being extremely pale, hence things like parasols.

Pale was the fashion from the start of the industrial revolution though, but I'm sure a girl with some colour was more appealing even before that.

Actually, tanned hasn't become considered attractive until the advent of the Industrial Revolution.