Faking it

Well, here I am, so white I’m basically blue, someone who barely browns and easily burns, whose family moved from the weak light and misty fenland of East Anglia to the black sand sizzle-plate of beachy New Plymouth, who can’t spend more than ten minutes in full sun without her scalp beginning to prickle, who has avoided shorts and strappy tops for years because she looks like she’s been poached in milk; and it’s never once crossed my mind to use fake tan.

I mean, I’m aware fake tan exists, but so does vegan mayo. Products like these are in my blind spot, and I just push the trolley by.

Whenever I think of fake tan, which is barely ever, I imagine it being applied professionally - either by jets in a shower situation or by a beautician at a distance, holding what amounts to a gun attachment on a garden hose. I picture myself topless, in a shower cap and paper knickers, told to turn slowly while she jet-blasts each buttock and does a circle around each nipple. Then she might get me to raise each foot so she can do the underside, which would make me feel like a Clydesdale getting my hooves picked.

But beyond the passing indignity of all this, imagine if you emerge from this the wrong brown? Trumpian Orange or worse, Jolson Black? Or just an unnatural sort of latte? You’re stuck with this for weeks. I don’t want to humiliate my children or freak out the dog, whose moods are closely aligned with his digestive system. Anyway, I don’t think a New Zealand salon would have the right colour blend for someone like me. Seriously, my skin is translucent, and my veins look like a Tube map. You can follow a route from my wrist to my heart.

Stepping into a beauty salon is a crapshoot at the best of times, especially if you’ve never met the therapist before. Luckily, I trust our local salon entirely (they see me bi-annually, for the purposes of deforestation). But if you’re a new client and you’re assigned a stranger to wax or tint your eyebrows, you immediately stare at theirs, just to establish what they consider reasonable.

You can relax if theirs are unremarkable, but due to new techniques and a fashion for beetle-black, there’s every chance you can see their brows from the international space station. You then have thirty seconds to decide if you’re going to go through with this.

There are other unknowns. It doesn’t really matter if someone whips more from your bikini-line than you intended. This is a victimless crime. But I’ll never get over the time I went to a local salon in the spongy old Fens before my grandmother’s funeral - in the kind of remote village just recently wired for colour TV - and lost half my brows in what can only be described as daylight robbery involving tweezers.

I literally had no hairs from the midpoint of my brows to what should have been the tapered points. She’d just plucked them right off, in pursuit of a look which must have been fashionable among people like her: people of the low country, happy to live in a drained pond.

I looked like I’d been singed by a firework. I got back to the cottage and my grieving family found it hilarious, which I suppose in its own way made it worthwhile. It has made me very wary of beauty environments, however, which is why I have never risked a fake tan.

Allow me an interlude to tell you that actually, my grandmother’s tiny town is unforgettable to me for a moment of pure grace. As our cortege drove along the main street, heading from Nana’s ancient church to her eternal rest, a passerby paused, removed his hat and bowed his head.

I can’t tell you how touching it was. It was gentility of the loveliest sort for being unexpected and, in a fleeting way, proved soothing. My grandmother’s passing mattered to a stranger. Our loss was felt. That moment taught me something and certainly beat the pulse and churn of London, where I lived at the time and where I hadn’t experienced any benevolence at all. This little parish, sitting low on a reclaimed marsh, had something to tell the rest of us about humanity. So many warm hearts lived quietly here.

With so few eyebrows.

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I have never for one second considered buying my own fake tan and slapping it on myself. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I was in a distant suburb, killing time in a chemist shop. I had about ten minutes to spare before collecting George from an appointment and figured I could browse uselessly for stocking stuffers.

I’m trying to talk less openly or at all to retailers, cab drivers, dog walkers and people in lifts, because my kids are at an age where I embarrass them by doing it. But on this occasion, I was free to be myself, and what myself wanted was a conversation. I hadn’t spoken to another adult all day. It didn’t have to be much, as I only had nine minutes by this point. Just a small exchange, and the store manager had already invited me to kick it off (“Let me know if I can help you with anything,”) which, to a lonely person who doesn’t get out enough, is the equivalent of putting on the kettle and reaching for the teabags.

“I never think of using self-tan,” I said, apropos of nothing. If I’d been in the Footcare aisle I might’ve said, “Are corn plasters really the big deal they’re made out to be?” But I was in Sun & Sand, where there were a ton of tanning products, so I went on: “You think I would, because look how white I am.” I probably stuck out my arm.

She was over like a shot. Turns out, she uses fake tan on her legs, just as far as her knees. She yanked up her capri pants to show me a fantastic pair of calves. I don’t even qualify this by saying she had good calves for her age. These were good legs at any age. These were legs for the AGES, but she dismissed them as bumpy and veiny and needing of coverage (they did not). Then she said, “Let me show you what I do.”

Next thing you know she had her hand in what looked like an oven mitt and was demonstrating, with an imaginary can of mousse, how much to spray into the glove (the size of a golf ball) and palming the motion against her exposed leg. Then she did the other leg. This was brilliant because it was pure theatre, and we need more art in our lives.

The trick was, to ignore what the can says and moisturize first. The trick was to avoid being heavy-handed around the knees.

The other option was to use a bronzing spray. She riffled through the products and found her preferred brand. I only had five minutes left before needing to get George but decided to leave him waiting on the side of the road, because I wanted to see what would happen next.

This delightful person then sprayed her arm liberally and rubbed it in, and her skin really did seem sheeny afterwards. I hoped she didn’t have to do this all day; she’d go home looking like a basted turkey. I was so touched she was willing to risk disaster for someone as non-committal as me, even if this stuff lasts just three days. I was beginning to wonder if a bronzing spritzer might change my life. Could I be the sort of person to wear barely-there sandals? What if I just sprayed myself from the ankles down? Imagine being unconcerned by showing my feet, like I usually am all summer, every summer. I could use that useless emotional energy for something else these holidays, like reading Joan Didion, whose books I’ve always found irritating.

Sadly, we ran the clock down, else I’d have stayed for ages. We could have moved over to Dental and tried bleaching her teeth with those strips. But this kind of customer service deserves rewarding, so I’m going back next week. You won’t recognize me when I’m sun kissed and glossy, like the hard sugar topping on a crème brûlée. You’ve going to want a spoon, trust me. That’s how luscious I’ll be.

Slurp.

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I can’t believe this is what I’ve chosen to write about after the week I’ve had.

I went from this

Our hotel view. No, we didn’t go up for Coldplay. Yet we paid Coldplay prices

To this

Oh, so you’ve been away? Big whoop

To this

Tūtira mai ngā iwi

And eventually, to this

Then I had four hours of dog obedience training, where I learned our poodle mix has no respect for my leadership and humps my face to prove the point. But no; none of these things have I chosen to write about.

I love how an unfurled fern is so tremulous but so mighty at the same time. Life propels it, pulsing along the stem, waiting for the sugars and the starches to push growth outwards to its very tips. When we walk past it next, Otto and me, this frond will be fully open, a wet and electric green, holding the sun like the palm of a hand. And there, my friends, will be grace.

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