Tsk tsk, Women's Health

Always happy to find alternatives to UV tanning in the mainstream media, I was excited to find a feature on sunless tanners in the July issue of Women's Health magazine. That was, until I actually started reading it.

The article begins by summarizing recent findings that spray-on sunless tanners may be harmful to the lungs. But don't worry. The article reassures us that we don't need to "endure a pasty existence." Call me crazy, but if tanning in general (outdoors, indoors, and now maybe in Mystic tanning booths as well) is bad for us, would it really be the end of the world to endure being pasty? Is being pasty really something that must be "endured" in the first place? My natural skin tone is obviously pretty light. Are they somehow implying that there is something wrong with me? Is it truly necessary to take the "Casper-ness out of pale skin"?

While I love a little self depreciation every now and again, it bothers me when I see fair-skinned women apologizing about how white their skin is. Articles like this one help perpetuate such behavior. Even if skin cancer wasn't an issue, I'd like to think that it's OK for me to be satisfied with my God-given skin color. I shouldn't be obliged to change it with sun exposure, DHA, or bronzing powder.

Is your skin "in"?

When I look at Carly Rae Jepsen, I don't think,
"this girl needs a tan." I think, "Where can I
buy that dress?"

You may not think of your skin color as a fashion accessory, but some people do. A recent article in USA Today presents a fascinating perspective on the status of "the tan" in the context of the fashion and beauty industry.

The article cites a beauty industry analyst who has noticed a sharp decrease in the number of celebrities and models who are shunning fake tans. It's a trend I've noticed, too. While a summertime tan is still the norm, the year-round permatan isn't as ubiquitous as it once was. Not in magazines, not in catalogs, not in real life.

I love this quote from Elle magazine's beauty director:

"The idea of people taking a step back to, 'What is my skin tone?' and celebrating their true skin color is very freeing. It's not about dark skin tones trying to be paler or pale skins trying to be darker."

This quote epitomizes what I try to encourage on my blog. Whether you're dark, olive, fair, or any shade in between, owning your natural skin tone is so much sexier than running around looking orange.

Plus, it's incredibly liberating not needing to wait in line at the tanning salon, spend money on overpriced indoor tanning lotions, or worrying if I'll smell like spray tan before I go on a date. Because, let's be real. That shit stinks.

On beauty

Saw this image on Facebook today. The photographer was listed as unknown, but I love it. Isn't it the truth? Test yourself. Which of these models would you rather trade bodies with:

Model #1. Image: Indy Fashion Marketplace

Model #2. Image: Chictopia

Playing catch up

Image: 1000awesomethings.com.

Eek! I've been slacking on my #NHBPM posts! I blame Thanksgiving. I was actually just thinking this morning--is it just me or is Thanksgiving weekend one of the busiest weekends of the year? I always look forward to having this super-relaxing four-day weekend, but then it turns into a marathon visit the family, visit more family, get started on Christmas shopping, eat eat eat, clean house, etc. etc. By the time you're ready to sit down and relax, it's time to go back to work! With that, onward...

National Health Blog Post Month Day 23: Clean out your fridge in written form. What’s in there? How does it reflect your personality?

My fridge is a little empty because I've been gone for the past few days, but perhaps I can still glean a little bit of my personality from what's left:

• Leftovers from Thanksgiving on a plate and in Tupperware (including turkey breast, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and black olives). Thanksgiving dinner is one of my favorite meals of the year. Even when I was a vegetarian, I've been known to request "Thanksgiving dinner" on my birthday, which is in August. I also buy canned cranberry sauce year-round and use it to make turkey sandwiches.
• 1% milk
• Brita water filter
• Goat cheese with herbs, shredded cheddar, sliced swiss cheese (I have a weakness for cheese)
• Grape tomatoes, butter lettuce
• Tortillas
• Diet Coke (not mine, this is my boyfriend's. I can't stand diet soda)
• Bottle of champagne (I read somewhere once that you should always keep a bottle of champagne in your fridge in case something happens worth celebrating. I've kept a bottle in there since. Last time I toasted was when I got a raise. Waiting patiently for the next good thing to happen)
• Condiments: whip cream (for pie that I ate), ranch, mustard (yellow & Dijon), balsamic vinaigrette, hot sauce, ketchup, sweet and sour, and Parmesan cheese
• Freezer: frozen veggies, pork chops, ice cream bars

How does this reflect my personality? I love food. Yum. Aside from the cheese and the ice cream, I'm actually a pretty healthy eater. I load up on tons of fresh produce every week and eat a pretty balanced diet.

National Health Blog Post Month Day 24: If I had more than 24 hours in a day…

I love this prompt because I am constantly saying, "I wish there were more hours in the day!" To be honest, I would probably just sleep more. I've been kind of an insomniac since I can remember, but I also get really cranky when I don't get enough sleep. I'm much more productive when I'm well rested (9+ hours), so I'd take some of that time, I try to use it to relax and rejuvenate. I might also try to work out more often. Going to the gym often gets cut out of my schedule when I'm busy with extra things, so it would be nice to have an extra hour or two so that I could go to the gym (or go for a jog) before work in the mornings.

National Health Blog Post Month Day 25: How have your goals as a patient / advocate / person evolved?

I don't know that my goals have evolved as much as my attitude towards them has. When I started this blog, I created the following tagline: "20-something-year-old melanoma survivor learning how to love the skin I was born in." My goal was to educate other young people about the dangers of melanoma, but also to document my own personal struggles with loving my own natural skin color. There were several times in the beginning when I felt like a huge hypocrite. Here I was going off on people on TV who wore too much bronzer, which I was still incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin. I wanted to slather myself in self-tanner, too, but I felt like if I did that, I would be lying to you all. Somehow, over the course of the past eight months, I've actually started to practice what I preach. There are still times I struggle (I'm anticipating difficulties when I go to the Caribbean this winter and I'm the only person using SPF 50 like it's my religion), but overall, I think this blog has probably been more therapeutic than I ever expected it to be.

***

This post was inspired by prompts from National Health Blog Post Month.
View posts by other participants.

Happy Halloween!

Me and my friend Debbie dressed up as loofah's last weekend.

Happy Halloween! I hope you're all warm, safe, and dry. The weather hasn't been so great this week, has it? When I celebrated Halloween on Saturday, I got drenched, but at least I didn't have a hurricane to contend with (I'm looking at you, Sandy).

Anyhow, funny story: Shortly after I published this blog post about body image and Halloween costumes, I found myself waiting in line at Joann Fabric to purchase 25 yards of tulle. I had seen a couple of girls at the 5k dressed up as bath loofah's and I thought it was such an amazing idea that I had to be one, too. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. I got stuck in line behind another group of would-be bath-poufs who were having a really difficult time deciding which color fabric to buy. They seemed miffed that I had taken the last few yards of purple.

"Ugh, I can't be light pink! I'm not tan enough!" one of the girls said.

Of course, in my head, my first instinct was to think, wow, wasn't I just talking about this? My second thought was, what is this girl talking about, she's already eight shades darker than me.

As the bath loofah fiasco continued (they had the nice lady working behind the counter measure out 20 yards of light pink, only to tell her they wanted to do blue instead), I couldn't help but wonder why we sometimes have such skewed perceptions of ourselves. When I see olive skinned women berating themselves for being too pale, skinny women berating themselves for being too fat, etc. I wish I could smack some sense into them and let them see what they look like from where I'm sitting. I know I'm guilty of self-hate, too, but it just kills me when people beat themselves up for not being tan enough. I lived with that feeling for so long, and I wish there was something I could do to prevent other people from feeling the same way.

Side note: Totally reminds me of that scene from Mean Girls where The Plastics are huddled around the mirror, commiserating over all their physical "flaws." Enjoy!

The skin cancer paradox

Image: Skin Cancer Prevention

A statistic that continues to perplex me: 86% of tanning bed users acknowledge that tanning causes cancer, and yet they do it anyway.

A reality that continues to perplex me: The number of people I'm friends with who continue to tan even though they know I've had melanoma (it's surprisingly high).

I realize that not all cases of melanoma are caused by UV radiation--natural or artificial--but some of them are. Yesterday, my dad sent me an article from CNBC.com that reiterates what I'm always saying about tanning and skin cancer: "Despite piles of research on the skin cancer risks of sun exposure and tanning beds, dermatologists and cancer groups struggle to persuade people to protect their skin from ultraviolet rays."

We know what we're doing is bad, and yet we do it anyway. It's like some sort of skin cancer paradox, isn't it?

If you're unfamiliar with recent findings, statistics, and legislation on melanoma, the CNBC article gives a great overview. I've read many of the studies it references in their entirety. I also love the suggestion from the University of North Carolina dermatologist at the end of the article: "Changing public opinion may be more effective than legislating change [for young people]. Effective campaigns to prevent skin cancer may need to emphasize that skin is most beautiful and healthy in it's natural, untanned, state."

P.S. Best of luck to my girl Chelsea Price who is speaking at the uber-fancy Skin Cancer Foundation Gala this evening. Besides hobnobbing with the rich and the famous, Chelsea will be sharing her experience of what it's like being a Stage III melanoma survivor in her mid-twenties. I hope that people pay attention because Chelsea isn't an anomaly. Melanoma isn't just an old person's disease anymore, and by limiting our exposure to harmful UV rays, we may be able to reduce the numbers of young people diagnosed with this crappy, crappy disease.

How much can change in four years?

Embracing my inner tourist outside the Met in NYC.

What a crazy couple of weeks it's been! Last Monday, I flew to Alexandria, Virginia for work. While I was on the East coast, I figured I'd stay and visit with friends from college, which took me from DC to Philly, Philly to NYC, NYC to Westhampton, and then finally back to Portland from DC. My two cents on that: Thank goodness for free Wi-Fi on Greyhound buses and thank goodness for Christian Grey.

For those of you that don't know me personally, I've been a bit of a homebody since I graduated from college in 2008. By that I mean, I've traveled around the Pacific Northwest quite a bit, but I've only been on an airplane three times in the past four years. This is a huge lifestyle change for someone who picked a school almost 3,000 miles away from home. Ironically, my work/vacation coincided with the four year anniversary of my college graduation. I'm still in semi-disbelief that I've been out of college for as long as I was in it.

For the first couple of years after school, financial constraints and a sporadic work schedule made it impossible to travel. Now, four years later, because I felt like so much has changed since college, I was honestly a little bit nervous to go back and "face the past." For example, the last time any of my friends from college had seen me, I was still using tanning beds. Would seeing the same places and people from before challenge my new lifestyle choices?

Reunited with my friend Leanne from college.

Yes and no. A few days before I flew out of PDX, my friend mentioned that we might be going to a pool party while I was out visiting. Almost as instinctively as breathing, I thought to myself, Oh crap, I'm going to have to get a spray tan. Then my normal brain caught up with my subconscious: Katie, you are much more comfortable in your own skin than you were four years ago. You just rocked an orange mini-dress at a party--totally sans tan--you know you don't need to be tan to be beautiful.

Was my mind just playing tricks on me because talking to an old friend evoked feelings of that old version of me?

At the end of the day, my anxieties were for naught. I had an absolutely amazing time on my trip. Seeing my old girlfriends, part of my felt like no time had passed at all. We were able to pick up conversations right where they left off four years ago. In a way, it was kind of like the best of both worlds: new me meets old me. Not unexpectedly, I did feel a little "homesick" for parts of my old life on the East coast. When I left Portland for Pennsylvania in 2004, I never thought I would be coming back. But here I am. Such is life. Apparently you can't always predict how things will turn out.

On a lighter note, you may have noticed in the picture above that I finally found a big, floppy hat!!! It's made by this company called San Diego Hat Co, specially designed to provide protection from both UVA & UVB. I absolutely love it!

Time to start planning my next vacation...

3-year-old me and loving the skin you were born in

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please help spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and family. 

Little me, happily oblivious of skin cancer.

Last week, AIM at Melanoma shared this fantastic new American Academy of Dermatology PSA on their twitter feed (kudos to whoever manages that by the way--you always write me back!) Much as I love bashing on tanning beds, I love this PSA because it digs a little deeper than that. It makes you think: at what point did I look at my natural skin color and start to think, "This is unacceptable. You are ugly"? Was it when kids on my basketball team started giving me a hard time for baring my pasty white legs in a pair of shorts, when I went to the Clinique counter for the first time and realized even alabaster made my face look dirty, or when I flipped through a Delia's catalog and realized none of the models looked like me?

Yes, it was the tanning beds fault that I got skin cancer. Yes, it was my fault that I went to the tanning beds. But whose fault is it that I felt like I needed to start tanning in the first place? Why wasn't my natural skin color good enough for me? Studies have shown that people are more attracted to others who have tan skin than those who don't. Just a few generations ago, however, folks felt the opposite. I hate to think that if I have a daughter she will be faced with the same pressures I have been: bleach this, tan that, buy this, don't buy that. Does it ever end? As a species, we can be pretty self destructive.

Although melanoma is depressing, and my rants about tanning are, too, I purposefully created this blog to celebrate pale being pretty. As a professional writer and a perfectionist, I agonized for days over how I should "label" my writings. "You're writing about tanning," my friends said, "The name of your blog should have something to do with tanning." But I held firm. This blog was to be more than just about tanning. It's about me learning how to embrace the skin I was born in, and to share that journey with others. I think that's why this PSA in particular resonated with me so clearly. On that note, please check out this lovely short video, and make sure you share it with all your friends!