Whoops...

This warm weather is dangerous. It give people ideas, makes everything seem like a brilliant choice and encourages us to quite possibly make asses out of ourselves.

Last week, everyone was walking around in shorts and sandals, looking as if the warm had been here for months. People really looked like we were in the middle of summer...and there I was, quite unprepared for it.

One of the things I dislike most about myself is my skin tone. I'm fair...beyond fair, almost transparently white. Not Bebe Neuwirth pale, but damn close. It goes with the blonde-ish hair and the blue eyes and all that other stuff. I don't mind the hair, and the eyes, but I hate the skin.

And as you may have guessed, I don't tan.

It's regretable, in a society that exhalts those who turn a crispy golden brown when the sun shines on their bodies, that mine refuses to comply. No matter what I do, be it a short stint in the sun every day, or longer times less frequently, I simply don't darken. I do however burn.

Red, painful, itchy, hot sunburns. And they aren't even worth getting, because they too don't simply fade into a healthy glow. They just fade away, back to white. So I'm forced to do the sunscreen thing and be 'careful of my exposure' (not that I am...).

Well, this year I really wanted to try to do something about it. I'm not really crazy about actually tanning in beds or anything like that, and I really don't think doing body spraying to make myself look darker would work for me either. But there was one product that I thought I'd give a try, and get a jump on the nice weather. Maybe this year I'd finally look alive during the summer months!

I grabbed a bottle of Nivia for Men's Summer Look moisturizer, that has some qualities that aren't exactly advertized as a skin bronzer, but will darken the skin color and give a 'sunless tan'. (Ok, I do realize that this somehow must be a bronzer, but I was playing stupid when I read the box.)

My first application was Friday, with my second on Saturday. I got a great day of sun in yesterday, since my parents and I went for an overnight in Huntsville, the family's destination of choice. I smugly sat in the sun, warming my bones and feeling the rays searing my face. "By tomorrow I'll look at least somewhat colored!" I promised myself.

When I got up this morning, after a few minutes of walking around admiring the lake view, my mother stopped me.

"Whats wrong," she said, staring at me. "Let me look at your face."

I paused, half smiling inwardly, half mildly concerned. Perhaps she's noticed something?

"Your face...it's kinda yellow," she said, her eyes fixed on my now dropped jaw.

Oh shit.

I went to the mirror, praying along the way she was wrong. I turned the corner, and there it was.

The whole face wasn't yellow, but where the second day of stubble had grown in was shaded a funny color. I studied the top half of my face, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the light was making me look weird. Thankfully the top was fine. So for some reason I've got this yellow shade mixed into my facial hair.

She let it go, but I knew she was watching me like a hawk. A half-hour later, my father stopped me.

"Is your face yellow?" he said, and just like mom he immediately started staring at me. By this point I knew a) there was something amiss with my color and b) it was obvious to everyone. But I immediately attempted to shrug it off, with a mixture of complete teenaged self-absorbedness ("What are you staring at!") and humour ("Oh, I must be jaundiced."

He too let it go. I didn't want to admit in front of my father that yes, I was using some tanning moisturiser ("You've been living in that damned city too long..." etc. etc.) so I waited until we got home and I could pull my mother aside and confess my horrible sins...

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you for telling me," she said, "your father was getting a little worried."

"About what!" I demanded. I still cannot get over the fact that I've lived away from home for the last 2 years, and am quite independent and self-aware to know if there's something actually wrong with me, yet the moment I turn yellow my parents think I've got some rare skin disease. Or something. They must be watching too much House.

But she just explained that it was a parenthood thing that neither of them could ever shake, and I should just be happy that they care.

At the next available moment, I had an idea. I lathered up and shaved away the stubble, using the theory that since it hadn't turned the rest of me yellow, there must be some strange facial hair/moisturiser reaction that made it look an odd hue. Thankfully, once I'd rinsed away my face, the color was mostly gone.

I popped downstairs, and passed my mom. She looked at me, nodded, and whispered, "It's pretty much gone." So it passed that test. Thankfully.

All in all, I'm not quite sure what to do. I mean, the rest of me hasn't turned funny colors, and once I'd shaved the strange hue was gone from my face. But I don't want to be yellow, and if there's the chance I'm going to turn that way again if I miss a day of shaving, I don't exactly relish the thought of walking around with a band of inhuman shade on my head.

So that was by breif and very unsuccessful attempt at changing my color. I guess there are just some things about ourselves that we'll never be able to change.