This is probably going to appear very shallow, but remember, it's all relative. And that's my point anyway.

As this disgustingly gloomy day comes to a close, I remember not so fondly how dark Seattle can be all through the winter. The sun shines rarely enough to cause quite a vitamin D deficiency, and on days it does shine, the temperature is low enough to tempt one to stay inside. Thus a number of my photographs before I moved to California involve two delightfully lightly colored Farowich girls and friends. Now everyone is a little older and a little more vain. Nearly every single one of my friends goes tanning. My friends in Seattle go tanning. My friends in New York go tanning. My friends in San Diego go tanning. My Asian friends in both Seattle and San Diego go tanning, too. The general consensus is that people just look better with a "healthy glow."

Fast forward to face wash shopping in China. . . every single bottle includes whitening and bleaching agents. The same goes for body lotions and sunscreens, pretty much anything you might find yourself massaging into your skin. For those of us with already fair skin and trying to make the most of a deep Greek bronze, face wash shopping became a very time intensive activity. NJ needed a steady supply of sunscreen and could not find any. The tiny bottle I brought from home was gone in two days. The face wash we found, but the sunscreen was impossible. For a product that is already supposed to keep your skin from getting darker, why wouldn't you want a bleaching agent in it?! BG knew the Chinese character for white, the lucky man. Furthermore, when we were at West Lake for the first time, the sun was shining pretty brightly, and all the Chinese were carrying parasols and huddling under trees. Blue sky is somewhat of a rarity in China, so this looked slightly preposterous to me, but BG pointed out that it was very typical Chinese. And talking to my Korean friend CK, she told me that she knows girls who have cosmetic surgeries to enhance a light complexion.

Protective parasols and dangerous blue sky

The Chinese girls who worked in the office with me at school were shocked by how dark my skin was when I arrived after being in Greece. They were almost apologetic, as if I had gotten so dark by accident.  Of course I knew that a lot of physical attributes are deemed beautiful by culture and society, but it was never so obvious as now. So much effort being into the changing of skin color, and different cultures are going in different directions! Kind of seems like nonsense. In lieu of this, I going to try to avoid running with the lemmings and visiting the tanning salon this year. Not sure that I will make it, peer pressure and vitamin D deficiency might do me in, but here goes.