Abstract

In this essay I hope to answer several questions: Other things being equal, why are the lightest women considered the most beautiful? Why have Caucasian women preferred dark skin during the past century? What does tanning mean in the context of current beauty norms? I argue that sun tanning is deeply tied to questions of race, class, and gender in ways that make this behavior a reflection of women's struggle to define themselves in twentieth-century Euro-American culture.