Pale Skin - Is it really that bad?

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!

I am from sunny Scotland and as pale as they come lol. I am at one with my paleness and don't care what anyone else thinks

Would be nice if I didn't burn like a crisp in the sun though lol

I'm Australian and I'm so white. I burn so easily and the midday sun just makes me feel uncomfortable, so I don't really like to tan. I get people giving me grief all the time about how can I be Australian and not tan, and even when I got a little bit dark (for me, which is still white for everyone else) my friend commented that I looked like I had used fake tan! Can't win. Anyway, I've never had a boy complain

we gingers do NOT look good with a tan. sun can kill us if we use it long enough to "tan" - and by that i mean our freckles merge. and fake-and-bake looks TERRIBLE with our hair/eyes. we gingers are meant to be a pale ppl.

I disagree with this. I'm a freckly ginger with olive skin. My family is Italian/Jewish. I tan standing next to a window and I don't think think that I look so horrible. We're rare, but we happen. :glasses:

I'm pale. I love being pale. I use a little highlighter in my make up to give me a natural looking glow. My skin is amazing for my age. I get a lot of people who never guess my age correctly. I don't look like a wrinkled leather handbag like a lot of the sun worshipping/tanning bed friends I have.

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?

I have very fair skin too and I ALWAYS burn in the sun---even late in the summer, so I never even tried to tan ever. It means that NOW I have very youthful skin for my age (everyone is shocked to find out how old I am). I do wear a bit of blush and lipstick though as I like having a "healthy" glow (although I need less now that I have been exercising regularly).