Women's skin before suntanning became popular - 1950


When I stumbled across this ad on the Duke "Ad Access" site (they study old advertising, and I just enjoy it), I couldn't help but notice that the man's skin appeared to be more tanned than the woman's. And it reminded me that I grew up in the era of women who wanted to be tanned, which must have seemed very strange to older generations of women.

Of course, the man may have just been in a shady area in the photo, or he may have had a bit of Italian blood, like I do, but I'm inclined to think that he showed what expectations were for men, and women. Men's faces spent time in the sun, women tried to avoid it. But things changed very quickly for women, and they wanted that tan.

Speaking for myself, I've been using sunscreen generously ever since I got badly burned in my early twenties while tubing in the Salt River near Phoenix, Arizona. I've never had a job that required me to be outside, but I've always enjoyed things like riding my bike, and golf, which has taken me out into the harsh Arizona sun. The times when my face hasn't had much color to it, like for a few years when I lived in California and didn't get out much, and couldn't afford the green fees, I was teased for being "pasty-white", and it just didn't seem very masculine. I'm still teased by my "macho" friends for wearing sunscreen which they wouldn't dream of doing any more than they'd wear a ballerina dress, as they would consider it feminine.

But the deep, dark tans that women desired became very popular by the 1960s and '70s. There was even a Barbie doll that showed off her wealth and glamor by having a tan, called "Malibu Barbie". And I remember the commercials for the "San Tropez tan" in the '70s and '80s. The goal now was for women was to have a dark tan, and they would have scoffed at the pasty skin of their mothers and grandmothers, who had used Palmolive, not Ban de Soleil.




Images from the Duke University Digital Collections.
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