You have to admit it, my friends, the cellulite that plagues our bodies (okay, some of you lucky ones, and younger ones, don’t have this issue) is much better looking when we have a tan.  This is only an issue for those of us who are really white, of course, which is why we spend countless hours trying to darken our skin in the sun.  Sure, we hear the warning signs about skin cancer.  Sure, we lather up our children with SPF 50.  Sure, we make them wear scratch vests/swim shirts with UV protection.  Sure, we tell them it’s time to get out of the sea and come into the shade.  Sure, we argue with said children when they fuss about having to succumb to our helicopter-parenting over this subject.  But how many of us practice what we preach?

When I was a teenager, back in the early to mid-nineties, I can tell you that there were countless times when I slapped on the baby oil and sat there soaking up the sun.  Oh how I felt that I had accomplished the world when my skin was glistening with a golden hue by sunset.  Better yet, after I had taken a shower and put on my white short shorts with a white tank top, I looked at my tanned self in the full-length mirror with such glee.  That was a perfect day.  That was a perfect holiday.

So why is it that we in the west do this to ourselves, even though we are bombarded with the facts about skin cancer?  Why is it that we find it so unattractive for our skin to be pasty white?  In fact, I go a horrid pale yellow that makes me look like I have a (non-existent) case of washed-out jaundice.  I seriously look a million times better when I have a tan.  But would the entire world agree with me?  Did you know that the Japanese and Chinese make it their mission to stay as white as possible?  My niece goes to school with many girls from those two countries, and she tells me that her peers are so careful with preserving their extraordinarily pale colour that they even wear sunscreen when it rains.

My present care of my skin falls somewhere between knowing full-well that I should be practicing what I preach to my boys and wanting that same tanned body which I had twenty-five years ago.  At my age, I need the tan because, quite simply, brown fat is nicer than white fat.