Lost Beauty Secrets : Self Tanner or How a "Goth" Chick learned to be tan.

Lost Beauty Secrets : Self Tanner or How a “Goth” Chick learned to be tan.

by A. Wicked

My name is Auntie Wicked, and I grew up in the sunshine. When I was a very young lady I would get brown and gold, never ruddy like the other children. When I was about 11 and started to go through puberty, I started to have troubles with my skin. I was ruddy, the sun started to give me horrible rashes, and I got two shades of translucent pale. My eyelids where a pale purple hue without makeup, and my skin, save a few pimples, was generally flawless without even the faintest touch of foundation.

Drama was the first place I learned to put on makeup, and at the time not even the lightest-hue of foundation matched the pallor of my skin () I always looked like I was wearing a darker mask. So when my musical and literary tastes ended up sliding me toward this ‘subculture’ called “Goth”, () I finally ended up finding ivory-pale foundations that perfectly matched my skin, although half the time there was little-to no need for anything but a finishing powder. I felt very accepted by this until a time make in the Goth Sub-cultural-Place that you could only be one under certain rules, such as hair needing to be black, and makeup having to be clown-white.Time passed, and my skin didn’t change much. I found another girl at college that finally had about the same shade of skin as I did, and always borrowed her makeup. (Thank you Illumination!).

One day, Your fair Auntie Wicked hit the dreaded age of thirty twenty-nine. I’d finally run out of the marvelous Shiseido and Stila foundations (and the Korres wild-rose face creams.) In my adventures, I found that powder would no longer hide the strange uneven ruddiness that was now permanent in my face. Even worse, when I bought my typically super pale make-up, it was grainy, weather it was liquid, powder, mineral, or cream. I cried, I screamed, I complained, and finally, like any good scholar, I researched.

Google . Even worse, my skin texture had changed, and needed to change up from a wash-tone-moisturize when I felt like it to “ex-foliation” and fruit acids? I ignored it at first, despite the fact that the self-portraits where telling me the same tale (). I bought theatrical makeup to take myself back to a shade of skin that was comfortable. In the Southern Summer my skin rebelled under heavy oily makeup, and ruddy breakouts ensued.For a long time, I gave up completely, and began wandering around in sweat-pants, no makeup, obsessively taking self-portraits to examine what had happened to my pretty, perfect skin.Perhaps partly because for a time I could not afford all the lovely expensive items that where recommended to me by every other blogieatrix, I moved down to nothing but SPF 30 (.), and occasional mascara. I still can’t afford any kind of expensive skin-stuff (). However it started me on a journey to accept the New Auntie Wicked, and swallow that something that had created a subcultural identity could carry me into my next phase.Last summer I took my niece to the swimming Pool once a week. Public Pools tend to be hard on the skin, and before I could say ‘wide brimmed hat’ I had the most lovely golden-tan I’d seen on myself since childhood. I had not a rash, nor a breakout, my one time of slight burning healed quickly, and left me with a healthy glow. Now I’m going to say here, I wasn’t rubbing myself with tan oil, nor did I cease using my SPF like a good girl, what I am saying is that I found myself embracing a whole new skin, with shock, awe, and trepidation.

As winter approached, I found my skin uneven again, and going through foundations like snotty-rags. Medium is too dark, Light is too light, even a mix of the two doesn’t get rid of the darkened spots at my mouth, or balance out the dark circles under my eyes (). One day, I was eyeballing a thing of self-tanner that Boi’s mom had given him to remedy the farmer’s tan he was developing () and on a whim decided to try it.Now I rubbed the YUMMY smelling stuff into my skin with no small amount of crippling self-doubt. I called myself a sell out, and wondered if I wasn’t being true to myself, I wondered what my Goth people would think, me rubbing self-tanner on.Then something marvelous happened! I looked at an lovely even skin tone. The odd dark spot at the corner of my mouth was gone, and I looked like a White-Ashkasha with a faint shimmery gold glow. I’d had a Snooky-nightmare about being one of the orange people, and yet, that isn’t at all what happened.I muse all the time about what this means. Did I stop loving Horror Movies or Visiting Graveyards? Did Halloween stop being my favorite Holiday? Do I still read Annabell Lee to myself on cold windy days? Do I still love black as my favooorate neutral? The answer to all these things is YES.I was never much accepted in general by the Club Kids or Internet Goths, and I don’t expect this Call to be Yourself will win me very many points with them (). However I am going to encourage EVERY last one of you to do the same.If you are super pale, you be happy with that, if you are dark-skinned, you too can be a Vampire-Wannabe. Be what you are, and don’t let pressure to conform to some idiot stereotype keep you from looking your best, or accepting just exactly who you are.As for your Auntie Wicked, she has her glow on right now, and refuses to be ashamed of it.

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