“You look so…healthy...”

I am disturbingly pale, the kind of pale where you look sickly. For a period of time I was optimistic that the popularity of the Twilight series would make being pale “cool”, but then the fervor wore off. Pale people are back to being weird and gross again.

But I have a solution: the spray tan. There are 2 kinds of spray tans (there are more but I’m covering just 2 here):
-a person sprays you by hand with sunless tanning formula
-a machine blasts you with sunless tanning formula and a bronzer

The first method is by far superior. The color is custom blended for you; the person spraying is a cosmetician who knows what she is doing; she can even provide abdominal definition or cleavage if that’s what you’re looking for. Your knees, feet and ankles don’t turn orange or blotchy, the experience is limited in the trauma you endure…aside from hanging out for 5 minutes in just your undies with a virtual stranger. But it’s relatively expensive: over $60 for the hand spray and it doesn’t last more than 5 days.

The second method is The Machine: the spray tan booth at your local tanning salon. I have a love-hate relationship with The Machine. Love that it’s cheap…Hate the imprecision. My first time I thought I stepped into a gas chamber at Auschwitz: I was not prepared for the sound of the high pressure nozzles or the smell of the tanning solution that fills the entire booth and chokes you because you can no longer hold your breath. The experience is disturbing because it’s loud, unnatural and smells funky. Defintely do a test run before it matters: on my first experience I emerged from the booth half done. But I have learned over time how to make this relatively incident-free, and for a mere $25 it’s worth it. Sort of.

Here is my process for The Machine; feel free to use it because it works.
1. Bring 2 large pieces of plastic wrap and 2 sandwich size Ziploc baggies with you
2. In the room, strip off clothes
3. Apply the deactivator cream to your palms and feet, but don’t trust it implicitly
4. Wrap feet in plastic and put hands into separate sandwich-size Ziploc bags
5. Enter booth and follow all the salon’s instructions from here on out, removing bags and foot wrap when done

So what’s up with all the plastic? Here’s the deal: the booth sprays excessively and indiscriminately. Your feet and hands WILL pick up a lot of the formula and that deactivator cream is not totally reliable. I have never been able to achieve any level of precision with my extremities, so I simply exclude them. Then I spend the next 24-36 hours perfecting the imperfect at home with an aerosol can of sunless tanner from the store. My freakishly white hands and feet soon turn a lovely golden brown, matching the rest of me. And yes, it’s golden brown, not orange.

Here’s what’s weird: I leave all the plastic wrap and sandwich bags in the garbage in the room. If you handle them after the spraying (aside from removing them), then the tan overspray will get on your palms and leave brown splotches. So when the tanning salon chick she goes in to tidy up the room after I have left she sees a garbage can filled with plastic wrap and sandwich baggies. I can hear her thoughts, I can practically see her texts and Facebook status: “What the F was she doing in here, making sandwiches?”

But after I buy a tan and I see my friends and they say “You look so…healthy…” well, that makes it worth it. Oh to be “healthy” all the time.