A Road to Self Discovery

As soon as I was a teenager it became very important in the summer to I acquire brown arms and legs.

For a German, Swedish, English girl this is asking for a miracle. My skin's so paleb that I have been the object of ridicule off and on my entire life.

"Do you ever go out in the sun?" I would be asked by complete strangers. A man I dated "for a minute" had the nerve to ask one of my friends why I wore a bikini at the lake one day because I was so white. (completely true)

As a teenager I could afford to go outside and broil in the using baby oil in the sun so that I turnned pink.
In my early teens, I allowed my skin to burn so I could tan, which is against what all doctors currently recommend, yet we were never told that.

One year on Memorial Day I went wearing just a bikini to the Pennisula in Erie,Pennsylvania. I spent the entire day on the beach in hot sun.My crush met me there.

I may or may not have used sunscreen. I spent that night at one of my girlfriend's houses and woke up the next morning extremely ill. I had to get up to go use the bathroom to do my hair and get ready for school. The next thing I know I had passed out on the bathroom floor and my best friend was over me waking me up.

In a week that very bright red burn turned a beautiful brown tan. My body was brown, my arms were brown. Even my legs were brown. That novel look was a very short-lived. After that I peeled like a snake.

By my late twenties and thirties I began using tanning beds. Knowing how fair-skinned I am, I went in for very short periods of tanning for weeks. I was slow baking like deer jerky to get me slightly brown on both sides.

When there was quick desperatio for color, I went to get a spray tan. No one who spray-tanned me seemed to be able to master an even skin tone.

Last but not least, you can buy stuff at the department store that will fake tan you. The newest fake tans are pretty good. When it comes down to it, I don't have a problem with white arms and white legs. Amidst the turmoil in the world right now I have long since learned how to love myself just as God made me.

This is my five
minute freewrite using prompt brown legs.

photo credit - author*

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