Pale Skin - Is it really that bad?

pale and proud
for a long time I was ashamed and tanning even during the winter
but nomore

I'm true strawberry blonde with freckles and practically blue skin, and a burn time of about 5 minutes even here in the UK :laugh:

I use fake tan on my legs or people get snow-blind.

i live in a beach town in orange county of southern california, and being as pale as i am definitely makes me sometimes stand out amongst so many pretty tan people, especially when i walk around in a dress and blind everyone with the bright white of my legs. but you know, the dermatologists applaud my "efforts" (ha!) at staying pale, my skin is soft, and i'll wrinkle less when i'm older. so i'm happy! i think pale is gorgeous and i've never understood the appeal of vigorous tanning when you're not naturally tan.

the only real bummer i can think of about being so pale is you can actually see the hair follicles under my skin on my legs even when i shave.. it's like i'm pale to the point of tissue-papery translucency, and having such light skin makes body hair look a lot darker. but that's not a big deal and it's certainly not enough to make me want to go lay out in the sun for hours on end!

No, be happy in your own skin because that's what people look best in. A dark person isn't going to look better lighter and vice versa in most cases. Everyone was born in the skin colour that suits them best in my opinion.

Asians are obsessed with pale skin. They even have skin whitener cosmetics! I personally prefer tan on me or maybe I'm just feeling a tad rebellious and going against the 'norm' lol. If you're naturally pale, than you're pale and vice versa. Why does it even matter? There are better things to fret about than skin color.

I grew up in Nor Cal and was always around tan people but I am almost see thru I am so pale. lol.. my legs are usually the same shade as my socks LOL... I say it just brings out the beautiful colors of my tats better

i'm pale and i love my skin! i love the contrast between my pale skin, dark brown hair, and green eyes! i think it makes me unique! sadly, people would always make fun of me for wearing shorts. but now i could honestly care less about what some superficial douche thinks about my skin. i live in a very warm place, you better believe i'll be wearing shorts, and if you don't like the view, then you don't have to look

anyways, if you have pale skin, rock what you got!

I happen to like pale skin.

I would just like to throw this out there - I get a lot of hate for being pale. A /lot/ of people say "Oh, you look so pretty, but a tan would make you look amazing." No, it won't. I'm from Scottish and Norwegian blood, with red hair, and I like being pale. Stop telling me to tan. I wouldn't tell someone from Hispanic or African, or even 'darker' places in Europe like Italy and Greece, to bleach their skin to get paler, so why tell me to tan? I, personally, find pale skin beautiful on /me/. That doesn't mean I'm racist. It doesn't mean I don't find tanner skin ugly. I just don't think it looks the best on me.

So please, those of you who make fun of people who are paler than normal, don't tell us we look 'unhealthy' or that we should 'get some sun' or, even in some cases, that we're 'ugly'. Just because it isn't the standard of beauty in most places in the Americas and Europe, doesn't mean that we are any less attractive than you are.

Anyway, where do people of MFP fall on the spectrum? Do you think being pale truly is bad, or just different?

Couldn't agree with you more!!!! I'm not ginger, but my mum, brother and daughter are, and so my skin is really pale, I get freckles from prolonged sun exposure, but I have brown hair. In the past I used to not like it, thinking I was pasty and ill looking and all the rest...........

.............well then I went to live in the Arabian Gulf area and teach English as a foreign language. Several of my students, who had the most beautiful olive skin, told me how beautiful my skin colour was and how much they wanted skin like mine. I told them British women wanted skin like theirs and how beautiful olive skin is.

Women in Arab countries and other parts of Asia buy skin lightening creams with dangerous chemicals in them (i.e. banned in western countries kind of dangerous), meanwhile women in the west have sun beds, go sun bathing and have fake tan. (yeah unfortunatly what you said "you wouldn't tell (add ethnic group here) to lighten their skins" - well there are ads on the TV here all the time that tell Asian women to do just that....)

That made me wake up and appreciate my skin colour for what it is. All skin colours are beautiful.

If someone doesn't like my skin they don't like my skin )shrugs) not my problem

Getting called snow white by my family I totally relate...I'm fine with my pale skin - I love it. Plus I would just turn into a blob of freckle anyways.

Everyone's always like "but your hair is almost black? shouldn't you be tanner?" It's not just blondes and redheads who are pale. Everyone's BEAUTIFUL.

My family used to call me Lilly because I'm so pale ! But my family is Irish and I have classic Celtic coloring very dark hair and very white skin and I love it :bigsmile:

Sun doesn't tan me it turns me a painful purple so its SPF50+ all the way .. on the upside unlike my tanned friends I don't look my age :happy:

Pale skin is beautiful.

Nothing wrong with some creamy, milk white pale skin! Unless you sleep during the day and feed on the humans at night. Then you have a problem.

Pale blonde, of Scottish/Norwegian extraction too. Tan? What tan?! I tried once, as a teenager, and ended up with third degree burns on the backs of my knees. Never again! I occasionally go a faint shade of biscuit if I'm in a mediterranean country in summer for a month or two, but otherwise, not a thing penetrates my SPF 50 (face) and 30 (body), hats and mid-day sun cover-ups. My sister, rather annoyingly, inherited an olive skintone from a distant French ancestor (I assume!), and goes a glorious golden shade as soon as she goes into the sun, even with sunblock on.

No point in fighting your natural predisposition in the pursuit of fashion - all anyone achieves, whether it's western girls trying to tan, or eastern girls trying to lighten their skin, is damage and exposure to things that might hasten our demise. I can burn in a few minutes of sun in Central Scotland (quite a feat!), so I'll be sticking to a little gradual-tanning lotion to counteract the blue-white of my just-post-winter skin, and enjoy the fact that my skin in my 80's will probably be infinitely better than that of the sun-worshippers.

I'm a Scottish redhead, <<< the pic today was taken my wedding day, I bowed to pressure back then and got a St Tropez tan, every time I look at the photos I laugh because I'm NEVER that colour, I think I look foreign! I'm happy being pale, even though the dazzle off my white legs could cause blindness. People have a joke with me about it but I just shrug, the Scottish weather doesn't allow for many days wearing shorts anyway!