Americans like to imagine themselves an enlightened lot who have embraced diversity, inner beauty and all things humanistic. However, there still exists a domestic population which remains stigmatized on the basis of physical appearance: those of us possessed of markedly light complexions.
Allow me, a member of this marginalized circle, to elaborate with a few lived experiences:
A salesperson at a clothing store made a nonchalant remark to me recently when I tried on a black sweater. She informed me they carried the same style in ivory, but I said I preferred the black. She promptly agreed, saying the ivory "would just wash [me] out more."
I spotted a particularly crass display of large-scale bronze bias last weekend–a billboard for a local tanning salon which featured a graphic depicting an unbaked frosted-cookie-facsimile of a beach-bound woman and the tagline "Looking a little pasty?"
Once, when an uncharacteristic charitable spirit got the better of me, I attempted to participate in a blood drive, only to be turned away with a line about how they were only taking blood, not giving it out. (All right, perhaps it didn't actually happen that way, but the joke has been made.)
Indeed, we of deathly pallor are just about the only group it is acceptable, even encouraged, to demean on the basis of skin color. Uttering any comparable version of the ubiquitous calls to "get a tan" we are beset with would be downright unthinkable in today's politically correct society.
Yet terms like "washed out," "pasty" and "ghostly" continue to thrive, despite the profusion of pleasant alternatives such as "alabaster," "porcelain" or "fair." Beyond those, where are our convoluted PC euphemisms? Where is "melanin challenged?" "Pigmentally impaired?" "Differently hued?"
As if life weren't arduous enough for our kind without semantic shenanigans. In our quest to avoid contact with the rays of the vile cancerous orb, we are slaves to SPF 45. Lens flares distort our driver's license photos. We are routinely typecast in amateur theater productions as fairies and floozies. We cannot loiter long about funeral parlors or morgues without being mistaken for escapees.
Things were not always as they are–pale skin was once revered as the pinnacle of status and health. Historically, ancients of both genders risked poisoning to whiten their skin with concoctions of lead and arsenic. Elizabethan women painted on faux veins on to appear more transparent. (As an aside to any dashing young med students who find that alluring, mine are all real.)
Tan has, in fact, only been resoundingly "in" since the 1960s. We of immaculate countenance have the rest of Western civilization on our side.
We also have the satisfaction of knowing we'll never have to look in a mirror upon hitting middle age and find we've metamorphosed into weathered slabs of cowhide. Unless of course we succumb to the ultimate irony of our kind and, like the star athlete dropped in his prime by a freak heart attack, fall victim to skin cancer before we get the chance.
Nonetheless, I think it is high time we began campaigning for recognition as a protected class. Or at the very least, federal sunscreen coverage.
Holly Noe's column runs each Friday. If you're seeking a receptionist for your tanning salon, you can reach her at [email protected].