blame the french

I have been researching more on my topic, knowing that Mr. Ayers is soon going to say, "1st drafts are due tomorrow!" I don't want to freak out the night before, so I am working hard at deciding what I want to narrow my topic down to. I thought I was just going to write about the pros and cons of tanning but now that I've been researching, I've found some interesting information on how tanning even began and I think it would be useful to use in my paper. Heres what I've found on the cultural history.. but I don't know if I will use it in my paper or not yet.

At the time of Shakespeare, before the Industrial revolution, skin color used to define class systems; it separated working class from ruling class. In Europe, during much of the 18th and 19th centuries, fair, freckle-less skin was considered attractive, especially in women, since tanned skin was associated with manual labor such as on a farm or in the outdoor employ of a wealthier person. Having fair skin signified that one was wealthy enough to hire other people to do work for them. In ancient Rome, people used to lighten their skin with cosmetics, by powdering their faces.

Labor patterns then shifted during the early 20th century, with indoor work becoming the norm, tanned skin came to be seen as a membership of the leisured classes. When famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel (in the picture above) accidentally acquired a dark tan during a vacation on the French Riviera in the 1920's, she started a fad among whites for tanned skin. Now bronzed skin among whites signifies social status, wealth and health, possibly for the opposite reason. Now that most jobs are done inside, tans among light-skinned people signify the wealth required to have the leisure time to get a tan. A tan in the winter meant the bearer had enough money and status to afford a vacation to an exotic, warm climate.

By the 1970’s, people began to develop skin cancer from baking their bodies in the sun for too long. They were totally oblivious to the fact that their sunburns would turn into skin cancer only less than 20 years later.