Fake your way to a summer tan

– Posted on April 20, 2017Posted in: Advice, Blogs, Lifestyle

Clara Brodeur
Entertainment Editor

With the weather flip flopping between nice and warm to freezing, I can only assume we are on our way to summer. And boy am I not prepared for that. The only parts of my skin that has seen the light of day for a while are my face, hands and occasionally my forearms.
So, it’s pretty safe to assume that I’m generally as pale as a snowman right now. Rather than trying to get into shape so I can lay outside and tan, I have decided to try and fake my way to a nice golden brown. Or at least something close.
In picking out which fake tan would be best for me, I decided spray tans are too risky – orange, streaks and splotches being some of what drove me away. I don’t have the time or money to repeatedly go to a tanning salon to slowly bake the color into me, so the next best thing was a kind of lotion that supposedly would make look like a nice shade of toast.
I chose Banana Boat Summer Color Self-Tanning Lotion Light/Medium Color.tanning lotion They do have one to achieve a darker tone, but they were sold out at the store I was at. That, and if this was going to be a disaster, I wanted to keep the casualties to a minimum.
This item ranges in price from $6-10 and it was recommended that I exfoliate before applying the lotion. I found a snazzy looking “woven washcloth” that exfoliates like a dream for about $3.50. All in all, I spent about $12 on this experiment.
Now, I could have just tried the product out on my legs, or just a small portion of my skin that wouldn’t really be noticeable. I thought that since I got the light/medium color, why not do everything? I honestly feared for the worst, especially since the directions say it takes 2-3 hours for the final color to develop.
I tried to wait until the end of the full three hours, but I got antsy and checked about every hour. Results? None that I could find. The bottle said you could try applying it again, but to only apply up to twice per week. I could have tried it again, but I didn’t want to take any chances – I survived self-tanning with literally nothing happening.
The results may have been better with a second application, but I won’t be finding out for a while. I also might not have seen any results because my skin tone is already what they consider to be light/medium. There are a lot of variables with this, so I say to try it at your own risk.