I have been in London and Amsterdam the past two weeks meeting with beauty reporters from both magazines and newspapers. It has been fascinating. One meeting in particular got me thinking about self-tanners especially now that spring and then summer are approaching.

I was introduced to a reporter who simply had on the worst application of self tanner I had seen in a long time. She had it streaked all over her hands and her face had a strange, dull, orange-looking color, and overall it just made her look sickly. Clearly not the effect she was going after!

I’m not sure what went wrong with her application and I just didn’t have the heart to ask (maybe she didn’t know it looked terrible and would feel insulted and you definitely don’t want to upset a reporter over a personal issue like that). Nonetheless, it got me thinking about the self-tanner I formulated for my Paula’s Choice line of skin-care products. My question is, why apply self-tanner at all?

There certainly are women who know how to apply self-tanner beautifully and it is absolutely the only way to achieve a safe tan (getting tan from the sun, even a little bit is damaging to skin, causing wrinkles, skin discolorations, and increases your risk of getting skin cancer significantly). I even offer a detailed step by step for applying self-tanner on my web site. BUT, why change your skin color at all? Why not love your natural skin color? Why go through the trouble of becoming brown when the shade of skin you have is beautiful as is? Artificial brown (or even getting brown from the sun—God forbid) is not any more beautiful than the real tone of your skin.

Have you noticed that over the past 10 years or so models and Hollywood actresses don’t show up with tans any more? They all wear their own skin color accented with simple to alluring makeup applications. My personal thanks and accolades to those wonderful women for showing us the way.

As an aside, you may wonder why I’m advocating loving the skin color you were born with but freely admit to that I see nothing wrong with coloring my hair (I don’t like my gray hair) and wearing makeup (I do like the feeling of “being a girl” and the glamour part too). On one level that sounds hypocritical, but using self-tanner to change one’s skin color encourages the notion of tanning itself, and the more we encourage the idea that tanned skin is more beautiful than un-tanned skin, the more women will justify risking their skin’s health (and their lives) to reach that dangerous ideal.

So rather than struggling with applying self-tanner (which is a tricky endeavor at best), consider going au naturale by not getting a tan either from a self-tanner and definitely not the sun. I won’t mind if my sales of self-tanner suffer a bit if by doing that, you experience loving how naturally beautiful your skin color is. What a great way to enjoy summer.