White = Fair

The Day I Decided White is Beautiful
Personal Narrative
By Deneille Wyatt

I got it from my mother! Everywhere I looked I saw people with beautifully bronzed skin that seemed to glow and radiate confidence, but when I looked in the mirror all I saw was white, almost ghostly looking skin that seemed frail and drab. I had dreams of being tan, but up to this point I had only experience two shades of color, white and red! One day as I was lamenting about my total lack of pigmentation a friend informed me that all I needed to do was slowly build up a base tan. “You should check out a tanning salon,” she recommended. Of course why hadn’t I thought of this before? It made perfect sense, and I had heard that tanning beds were much safer than direct sunlight.

I arrived at the local tanning salon with images of obtaining the perfect skin tone dancing through my head. After briefly speaking with the girl behind the counter, it was decided that I should only stay in for ten minutes. Completely unprepared for what lay ahead, I undressed and walked into the tanning parlor. Lying in the warm bed, I couldn't help think about all the people who had laid on the tanning bed before me. I felt awkward and exposed, but the reward would be worth it. Ding! My ten minutes was up and I left feeling quite confident with a little extra bounce in my step.

As the day wore on I began to feel some discomfort, and gradually the pain began to really take hold. Little did I know, ten minutes was much too long for my ultra-fair skin tone. Instead of turning a golden brown, I came out purple. A new color I thought my skin could never turn. As the pain became too much to bear, I was left to recuperate and heal on the couch. I couldn't move without feeling the searing pain rip through my body. It was impossible to sit or lay down without experiencing excruciating pain because every single part of me was burnt to a crisp. Parts of me that had never seen the sunlight, and probably shouldn’t have been exposed in the first place. Along with the burning came itching and I was becoming desperate, I would try anything to ease the pain that left me incapacitated. I tried aloe vera, but it just seemed to make the itching worse. Modesty was thrown out the window, and as I lay mostly naked on the couch my sisters brought me cloths soaked in milk to help ease the throbbing pain.

It was then, lying on my parents couch basically an invalid that I decided white was beautiful. The pain was not worth the tan, which I didn't obtain anyway. After all Snow White ended up with Prince Charming. White is beautiful, it just goes by a different name, fair.