Jo Weldon

Tan Lines: An Art Form

By Jo Weldon

This article originally appeared in Creative Loafing, 1995

 

I used to have some kick-ass tan lines. My skin was a silky golden brown, gleaming over my sculpted muscles—I was fanatic about loofahs and callanetics at the time. My perfect tan was broken only by the whitest of milky tan lines in the shape of my triangle-top thong-backed bikini, which caused my erogenous zones to stand out in such sharp relief that it was almost impossible for customers at the club to look at any other part of me. Men were constantly coming up to me while I was completely nude to say, “Id sure like to see you on the beach in that bikini.”

 

Needless to say, they never would. It wasn’t only because that bikini would have gotten me thrown off the average beach, or because I’d run away if I thought I recognized anyone from the club. It wasn’t because I wore the bikini only in a tanning bed; I’d already long been convinced that tanning beds were the devil’s own toaster ovens and I wouldn’t go into one for any amount of money. No. It was simply because that bikini never existed.

 

My tan came not from some exotic beach, not from some mundane poolside loll, and not from any microwave coffin, but from the Clinique counter at Macy’s, generally purchased during Clinique time so I could get free lipstick. I bought so much Clinique bronzing gel that I deducted it from my taxes, under costumes. Gypsy Rose Lee used to say that she wasn't naked because she was completely covered by a spotlight, but I was never naked because I was always suited up in bronzing gel.

 

I suppose it’s hard to imagine painting your entire body every day before going to work, but that’s exactly what I did. It wasn’t as simple as just rubbing the goo all over my body—I had to paint on those precise white shapes. The point of the tan was to show the tan lines. The tan lines, smalla s they were, took up the greatest part of my prep time.

 

First, I would standi n front of the full-length mirro and rub lotion all over my body,making sure that it was fully absorbed before I began my ritual. It had to be a non-oily lotion, because oil would cause the gel to streak. I used the lotion to cure my canvas, so to speak.

 

After the lotion had set, I drew on the bikini lines with a white cover-up stick. This could be grueling, because they had to be perfectly even. Until I got used to it, this part of my paint job took me as long as 20 minutes to finish, which became the length of my entire painting routine once I became an expert. Also, I had no original tan lines to go by because I never went out in the sun. The sun gives me hives. The most outdoorsy thing I did was step outside to smoke.

 

Once I had my white guidelines, I painstakingly traced tehm with the bronzing gel. This way I got the sharpest contrast. Then I smoothed the bronzing gel over my entire body, aiming for smooth, even color over the most difficult terrain you can imagine. The hardest parts were my shoulderblades and forearms, so I did them last, and if they streaked I would rub more lotion over them.

 

Once the base was done, all that remained was a dusting of baby powder to set the sticky white makeup, and a little bronzing gel on my nipples to increase the contrast there. Because they were so difficult to paint on evenly, I think my nipples were a different size every night.

 

Then I combined a little bronzing gel with my foundation and got start on my face, which was a snap by comparison, even with the false eyelashes.

 

That gel ruined every costume I had for years. Also, if someone spilled a drink on me, I had to go back to the dressing room and start over. And every night when I came home after 4 in the morning, I had to take a meticulous bath to keep the stuff off of my sheets. The last thing I saw before I went to bed was what looked like a bathtub full of cola.

 

You mayt hink that this is some neurotic, fetishistic ritual performed by me alone, but I can assure you that in my time it was such a craze that any dancer who hadn’t done it had, at the very least, seen it done. Even those with tans did it, to enhance what they’d already accumulated. I knew of one dancer who was so good at the job that she made most of her money by coming to work early to paint other dancers at $20 per.

 

Did the tan lines work? You bet they did. It wasn’t that they looked natural, because they didn’t. But the contrast drew the eye, and in strip joints, it’s all about drawing the eye. And anyway, I felt naked without them.

 

I suppose tan lines, like bleached blonde hair, are not longer quite the asset they were in the 80s. Strip joints, like other subcultures, go through trends. About the time I quit, the trends in Atlanta were running to Laci LeBeau’s diet tea and lip injections. When a girl goes too far with these, she achieves an odd lips-on-a-stick look, but even so, it’s an improvement over the fried hair and complexions that preceeded them.

 

I haven’t gone natural, not with the fake eyelashes and nails and pubic hair dyed red to match the red mane I’m now affecting in order to keep my pale skin from looking a bit too Gothic. However, tan lines seem to have lost their effect on cutomers. When everyone had them, they were no longer anything special to see. I hope Clinique doesn’t go out of business on our account. I wonder if they’ll discontinue the gel.

 

I’m still not very outdoorsy, either. I like to go to the beach at night, though—when I don’t need a bikini.