In Defence Of The Spray Tan – The Most Transformative Beauty Treatment Going

“Have you been on holiday?” asked my friend, Charlotte, suspiciously.

I frowned. “Are you asking me whether I got home from work last night, had a quick, impulsive fortnight in Tenerife and then magically reversed time in order to be in the office this morning? No! It’s a spray tan.”

Comprehension dawned on Charlotte’s face. “Aha! That makes sense. It looks really good, really natural.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “It’s that place on the corner, fifteen quid! You should go.”

“Oh, no, no, I’d never get a spray tan, I’d look really tacky and orange. It looks great on you though!”

I have had as many conversations like this as I have had spray tans. Since I moved and discovered a salon by my flat that does a 10 pound tan, this means that the number is in the hundreds. Everyone says I look nice. Everyone is surprised to discover the source of the niceness, often making the same joke about how they would expect me to glow in the dark. I’m not coy, sneaky or bashful about it. I have no interest in keeping the source of the golden glow a secret. I offer phone numbers. I tell people that if they tell them I sent them, they might get 20 per cent off. Yet, everyone backs away as if I’ve told them I’m in a sex cult and I’m actively recruiting for new members.

Although I’d made various attempts at self-tanning, I put on my very first pair of paper pants and went pro in 2010. The scholars amongst you will notice the significance of the year. 2010 was also when TOWIE made its TV debut. I should admit that I did not, at first, watch TOWIE for noble reasons. Not quite consciously, I’d decided that I must be better and smarter than the orange people I saw in the trailer. I was familiar with the Essex Girl clichés. In comparison to the cast, I was an intellectual heavyweight – I based this on nothing but the fact that my fingernails were bitten down and not acrylic.

I tuned in to laugh and distract myself from the fact that I had tens of thousands of pounds of debt and an English degree I didn’t use. By the beginning of the first ad break, I was charmed, addicted and a little bit in love with the Essex look. The women on screen knew themselves, and they expressed that knowledge by choosing their own aesthetic. When I saw Sam Faiers gluing glittery crystals to Amy Childs’ fanny, I realised that my own beauty routine could stand to get a little bit more exciting. There were products beyond concealer and dry shampoo. There were looks other than ‘slightly less hungover’. So when I saw a local salon advertising spray tans, I channelled the women of Essex. I ripped off my clothes, jumped in the booth and never looked back.

I think a spray tan is the most transformative beauty treatment going, as well as the one that offers the most bang for your buck. It forces you to embrace being naked. Showing your nipples to a stranger – especially a stranger you are paying – is initially awkward, at best. I am not a beacon of body positivity in any changing room. In the moments before a spray tan, I see my body in its worst possible light. Why do my legs look grey? Have my breasts always been lopsided? Why does the part of me where hip meets thigh remind me of a 99 melting on a pavement in 30 degree heat? But then, the curtain is parted, the gun toting technician loads her weapon, and looks me up and down as though I am a bookcase that she is upcycling. I do not have the best or the worst body she has ever seen. I am simply something standing between her and home time. She does not see a fat girl, a thin girl, a hot girl, an ugly girl or any one of a thousand things I have been called in my life. Just a girl with skin to spray. It is gloriously disinhibiting to see yourself through someone else’s eyes and realise you’re as neutral as an unpolished book case.

The first 12 hours after can be tricky – and sticky. There are rules to follow. Ideally, you’ll sleep in your spray overnight, and shower it off in the morning in order to allow the colour to develop. You need to wear a dark garment, which doubles as a sleeping shroud. It needs to be long and loose enough to separate you from your soft furnishings. You don’t moisturise before a tan – as it creates a barrier between you and your skin – but after the first shower, you must moisturise your body as though Jonathan Van Ness is standing in your bathroom yelling instructions at you through a megaphone. (Exfoliating is the very opposite. Before the spraying, buff your body until it is so smooth that trying to hug you would be more difficult than trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap in the shower. Then ban all exfoliation for as long as you want your tan to last. Cross the road if you see someone with a beard, just in case they accidentally scratch you.)

If you can survive the first half day, then you are guaranteed your very own golden hour for at least a week. A spray tan makes me feel like the girl from Ipanema. Instead of getting out of the shower and wondering why there is so much water on the floor, and when I will be dry enough to put a bra on, I wink at myself in the mirror. I giggle, and jiggle, and wiggle. I feel like Le Mepris era Bardot. I hum Club Tropicana in the post office queue. Emails can pile up, washing machines can break, toes can be stubbed, but in my heart I’m sipping rum from a coconut and feeling as golden and gleaming as an Oscar statuette.

Our skin is political, and we are slowly getting better at understanding that it’s all part of a broad and glorious spectrum. As a white woman, I have to acknowledge the fact that I move through the world with an enormous amount of freedom, regardless of the specific shade of my skin. It is important for me to be very aware of the fact that when the shade becomes darker, I retain this freedom. This is not true for every woman, and it should be.

However, as the only spray tan addict I know, I realise that I love the treatment for a reason that is not usually associated with any aspect of the beauty industry. I feel as though it gives me agency. I don’t have to embrace ‘the natural look’ or ‘love the skin I’m in’, if I don’t want to. I have choice. And I chose to ignore every snobbish, reactionary, narrow minded idea that ‘real’ is good and ‘fake’ is bad, and that the women who choose what they do to their bodies and faces, and the way they present themselves to the world are lacking in intelligence and free will. I choose to live by Amy Poehler’s maxim, ‘good for her, not for me’, and celebrate the fact that we are all uniquely beautiful because we make unique choices, and every fake nail, filler shot and tattoo makes us as magically different as the bits we were born with. I choose paper pants. I know I look good with a spray tan. But more importantly, I feel like a goddess. Who wouldn’t want to feel like a goddess for a tenner?

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