Bloody Suntan

Paradoxes of California N.1. You think of all those sunny days and the infinite beaches and then you think of sunglasses and of suntanned beautiful people, those you see in TV, but also walking on Sunset. However having a tan from the sun is very inappropriate. Here is the story: between coffees in the gardens, going to the pool, and a few times at the beach or taking a sunbath in the patio in my house, I developed a good tan, carefully built over the last two months by means of small amounts of exposure to direct sunlight. I wore my 70 maximum protection to minimize risk of burning. As southern Italian I have been socially raised to consider it shameful to appear with a library-grey skin at the onset of August. California might be considered to have a Mediterranean climate, but not a Mediterranean culture: in the last days I have been confronted with a number of remarks coming from both senior and junior American colleagues, and from library employee about my suntan. hey you got a suntan! However, they were not complimenting me, they were reproaching me something. It was not either the kind of comments suggesting you-have-been-having-fun you would get in Europe, no, these comments contained a deeper concern. I made a few inquires on the subject and here is the results. White people here do not go about with real tan, they get it sprayed onto their skin in beauty salons. The alleged reason for such perversion is of course the usual terrorist pseudo medical discourse on skin cancer we also get in Europe via prostituted journalism, with the difference that here it has developed in full common sense. One should were eyeglasses not to appear cool, like in the old song by a Sicilian singer, but because the sun is bad for your eyes; one should wear sunscreen every day because the sun is bad for your skin; than, for the sake of beauty you should go in a salon and paying for a sprayed on suntan. If you do not behave like this, you must be a Latino.... or working class.