cut out all the parts that held your stain

title: hazelton – artist: justin vernon 

I ran across some photos I’ve had for awhile. So, here is the tale that accompanies/precedes a few of them.

In April (you know, just a few months and a couple of seasons ago), the salon where the splendid Miss Ashley (who makes my hairs beautiful) works, was having a Facebook contest for a spray tan. It was a service they’d just started offering and so, being the brilliant women they are there, it combined the opportunity to make their clients feel involved, advertise their new product/service, get practice with the new product/service and, ideally, get the clients hooked on it, all in one fell swoop.

Even though it’d begun warming up around here, it was still in that territory where it could often be a little too cool out to strip down to bathing suit levels of skin exposure to get a tan the way God intended. Thus I was, of course, doing the next best thing and making use of Neutrogena’s advances in self-tanner science. Their airbrush product is pretty rad, aside from coating my bathroom floor in a fine, sticky mist of self-tanner. But that was a price I was willing to pay to venture out of "How did I get so pale!?!" territory a little sooner than I might otherwise.

That being said, usually my fed-upness with my pale state is enough to put some distance between me and the memory that I kind of hate self-tanner. I’ve yet to use one that left me orange, so it isn’t a color issue. And Neutrogena’s airbrush spray tan product doesn’t make me smell like crackers, which is usually where the real dislike comes in, seeing as I’m not really into smelling like crackers. I just find it kind of tedious. Also, and it seems a little silly to admit this, but I’m often concerned about lulling myself into a false sense of base tan security when going the self-tanner route. I never last long enough with the self-tanner to actually have this happen, but… just the idea that I could, at some point, be all, "Psh. I’ve got enough color that I can go awhile without the sunblock," well, ugh. See, I don’t do that either. I’ve had a couple of bad burns in the past decade that have made me quite diligent about sunblock usage.

So, really, it’s an exceedingly silly concern. But, between the need for just the right amount of exfoliation, reapplication and, in the past, smelling like crackers (this was the first year I’d given the airbrush [that really should be in quotes: "airbrush"] stuff a whirl) I would always find myself chomping at the bit to throw on a tankini and get my (reasonable/limited) sun basking on. (Plus, you know, the months of cold with many of the days harboring grey, listless skies and then, FINALLY, spring being sprung, it makes a girl want to be out in the sun!)

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, I won the salon Facebook contest. Thankfully Ashley was primarily the one trained to do the spraying, so I made my appointment with her.  When the time came, I headed in, freshly showered, exfoliated, shaved and unadorned with any post-shower product at all. (Do you have any idea how much I hate leaving the house without deodorant? Sure, I regularly take chlorophyll, but STILL.)

You guys, I have a weird thing about tanlines. Which most of you know since you’ve been around here through springs and summers where I’m frequently working on finagling my attire to minimize them. I’d already started on a few odd tanlines thanks to a walk followed by egg hunt supervising on Easter resulting in a completely unexpected sunburn (I didn’t think I’d been out that long) that left a redhead aghast at my burning abilities. A REDHEAD! He didn’t burn, either. And we were outside for the same amount of time. Seriously.

Okay, extreme digression aside…

My expectation was such that I was pretty sure my funky tanlines would be well disguised by Ashley and her airbrushing (the kind that doesn’t require quotes). I was also informed, when I made the appointment, that a set of disposable undergarments (bra & panties) were provided. Do you see where this is going yet? Me and my aversion to tanlines, the fact that disposable undergarments are flimsy, usually need to be moved in such a way as to result in exposure anyway… yeah. My stylist saw me naked. And I had to do a slight variation on a warrior pose. Naked. I’m not really one of those "Oh, we’re all girls. We have the same parts. I’m going to change RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF YOU." kinds of girls. I seem to know a lot of these women. And I love them dearly. And while I’m reasonably comfortable with my body, I still have a pretty hardcore modesty streak. That being said, Ashley is awesome and it was pretty much like being with a nurse. Only she provides beauty treatments instead of medical procedures. Which, if it’s a scenario in which I’m going to be naked, I’d prefer it that way.

Discussing the post-spray tan procedures with Ashley, I decided I’d just sleep in the spray tan, complete with guide color, before showering. I dug my spray tan. It went fairly quickly, I had WAY more color than the gradual building I was getting with Neutrogena. I still didn’t smell like crackers (well, for most of the day. I was a little cracker-ish by evening and until I showered the next day).

The first not-so-awesome moment with the spray tan was that, not so very long after disembarking from the salon, I was drinking water and driving at the same time. In the process of this, I squeezed the bottle or something, and got a bit of trickle down action going on in the collar bone/chest area. Mostly my chest. Which made the guide color run there. Which made it look like I was dirty and I’d dribbled on myself. Or at least like I’d gotten a couple of trickles of water running down my chest. I had other errands to run, but I soldiered on.

Then, well… I was wearing a dress, and I have a habit of crossing my legs. And it was kind of a warm day. And the skin-on-skin contact got a little moist. So, the tops of my thighs, the backs of my thighs and the tops of the backs of my calves all had a concentration of guide color on them. The dress was long enough to cover these areas and so, again, no big deal.

Until I showered the next day. And the proceeding days. It eventually faded to "barely noticeable" before the tan up and sloughed off entirely. But I wasn’t aware I was going to get stained by the guide color. Or that I was going to have that guide color trickle souvenir for a few days. There were a few other moments of odd sloughing patterns that were pretty visible for a day or two.

The experience left me wondering if I was cut out for fake tans. I like the idea of them. I just prefer the real thing. With all of the learning curve involved with my first professional spray tan experience, I would still consider doing it again. Mostly if I had a specific event I wanted a tan for and no real threat of pictures being taken in the days following while I find myself unwillingly engrossed in exfoliation patterns. Fake bakes have their place, and I can see that.

But I was still glad to get back to tanning the old fashioned way. Besides, you don’t get to see a real live adorable bunny mere feet from you with a spray tan.

 


They’re phone photos. And I had the lighting setting WAY off and didn’t know it at the time. Hence the quality.

Yeah, I know. All of that for bunny photos. But, you know how it is around here. You do remember the frozen puddle incident, right?

Also, how’s that for a meaningful first real entry back in the swing of things?

If it makes it any better, here is an inexplicable photo of something I saw when going to the grocery store. While I have no explanation, and my mom was with me to witness it, it was/is still too overwhelming to leave unshared with others:

That’s some custom chrome right there. There was more detail in the customizing around the truck, but it was definitely on the creepier end of the spectrum. So we’re just gonna stick with this.

So, yeah. There’s that. You’re totally glad I shared all of that with you, huh? 🙂