Tan mah hide

The reason a post that was going to be about fake tans ended up being about flat hunting is because I was ruminating on the number of browned-up young women at work which, in turn, reminded me of a letting agent who showed me round a flat (you see, there is some kind of order in my seemingly random thought processes).

This agent was a woman in her early forties, I'd guess. She was good looking with a slim yet curvaceous figure so it was a shame that she went to such lengths to make herself look ridiculous: strappy vertiginous stiletto shoes, a sleeveless, frill-trimmed blouse with plunging neckline to accentuate an ample bosom, a short, butt-hugging skirt that was smart in itself but dragged into trashiness by the rest of the ensemble, all topped off by the fake tan. I don't know what was worse: the luminosity or the telltale patches of pasty white flesh on the palms and around the soles of the feet. When I should have been paying attention to her spiel about the property I was actually thinking that if you are going to wear revealing clothes over a bottle tan-job then you really should make sure that all visible areas are adequately treated.

I couldn't understand it. Here was a perfectly attractive woman who had made herself look utterly ridiculous because - why? - she thought it made her look glamourous, sexy, younger? Sorry lady, just makes ya look kinda' cheap and pitiful.

I know that there is a terrible, terrible pressure on girls and women to look good, that they are bombarded by the media with images of supposed physical perfection but let me set something straight:

Fake tans from a bottle look like exactly what they are: fake tans from a bottle. They don't make you look as if you have been jet-setting around the world, they make you look weirdly orange. May as well tip a pot of paint over your head because the effect would be no less convincing.

While I'm at it, fake boobs look weird and unnatural, botox-injected lips look weird and unnatural, facelifts look weird and unnatural. All those images of so-called beauty that assail us every day from every direction are carefully engineered, expensively mounted, grossly manipulated: i.e. fake, as fake as a tan from a bottle. They have nothing to do with real beauty in real life.

You know what real beauty is? A body and face animated by humour, joy, intelligence and compassion*.

Now that, that, is sexy.

* Well, OK, and an acceptable level of personal hygiene.