It’s quite ironic isn’t it, how we appear to come full-circle as far as trends go? I’m talking about all trends here and not just fashion, but naturally it is indeed in the fashion scene where trends are perhaps most pronounced. Fashion trends appear to recycle themselves every few years and I’m still waiting to see how the nineties are going to make their comeback in what would appear to be a rather interesting battle between a time when material was seemingly used in excess and right now, when minimalism seems to be the order of the day.
Otherwise the focus of this post turns to another one of the many trends which have something to do with how we look and how we present ourselves to the world, which is that of how our skin looks. For the most part, it would appear as if nobody is happy with their natural skin tone – either they want it to be lighter or darker, but there doesn’t seem to be any definitive consensus on what would make for that skin tone everybody would like to achieve – a sort of universally accepted skin tone.
Perhaps it’s even by design that nobody ever seems to get it quite right, or if they do then it’s something which they’ll have to keep paying for to maintain.
The irony of it all comes into play when people walk into a beauty spa offering tanning services such as a sun-bed and ask to have a treatment which will have them looking their “most natural” with the tan they’ll be getting. I mean what on earth does a natural tan look like, other than one which is, well, natural?
Even?
Some people might argue that an even skin tone is one which is most natural, but that’s not quite the case if you take the meaning of “natural” into account, in its truest and purest sense. Even if you go out into the sun fully naked and manoeuvre your body in such a way that all parts of your skin get equal exposure to the sun’s rays, you will never have a skin tone that’s as even as the likes of what sun bed treatments give you.
Natural skin tone is not meant to be perfectly even as there are darker areas and lighter areas for natural biological reasons. Those parts of your body which are exposed to the light more will naturally produce a little bit more melanin, hence the darker shade of colour, something which is often an indication of how healthy you are.
So the decisions you make around what you dress up in should not be based on how you think your body is going to tan. They should be purely based on how you look and feel. If you want to rock that light long sleeve dress in summer, do it. Don’t worry about the thought of your hands perhaps appearing a shade darker than the rest of the arm which is covered by the long sleeve. After all, can it get any more natural than natural itself?
