The Pale Picture
Alright, ladies, let me paint you a fucking picture—though you might need sunglasses to squint at it, it’s so blindingly pale.
Picture this: my absolutely gorgeous, bronzed, smug-as-hell husband-to-be, strutting around stark naked, looking like he’s just strolled off a beach in Santorini. A sun-kissed glow that he acquired on a holiday we took ages ago, and he’s still bloody glowing. I was on that very same holiday, roasting myself under the same sun, and yet here I am, looking like a cross between Casper the Friendly Ghost and a day-old stick of celery. It’s winter, he’s rocking a tan, and I’m rocking… well, blue veins and a faint flush that makes me look one heartbeat away from death’s door.
The Never-Ending Whiteness
I’ve been on several holidays with my mother since our couples holiday and yet here I am—still whiter than a bloody bedsheet on a line in a January gale, whiter than the inside of a loaf of Hovis, whiter than a snowstorm in Siberia, whiter than a tube of toothpaste, whiter than a polar bear doing a faceplant in the Arctic. Honestly, whiter than a packet of Tic Tacs – need I go on?
Meanwhile, my fiancé strolls around with his bronzed glow like he’s got his own personal Mediterranean climate following him about. It’s enough to make a woman lose her mind.
Now, let’s talk about this ridiculous “natural tan” of his. This man is as English as they come—Viking-blue eyes and that impossible, year-round olive undertone that refuses to bloody fade. It’s like he’s made some unholy pact with the sun, guaranteeing a permanent bronzed glow. He’s strutting about like a Mediterranean god, while I, a green-eyed, Celtic-skinned lass, am virtually translucent on a good day. On a bad day? I’m positively phosphorescent, glowing in the dark like a human glow stick.
The Celtic Struggle
I mean, honestly. He tans once, and it clings to him like he’s been dipped in golden syrup. I go on the same holiday, put in the same sunbathing hours, and what do I get? Slightly pink shoulders that immediately retreat back to their ghostly pallor, leaving me looking like a failed experiment in skin tone. Don’t even get me started on the faint blue roadmap of veins snaking its way up my arms and legs. You could practically do a bloody anatomy study just by staring at my limbs.
The injustice, my friends, is real. And it’s infuriating.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to even the score. But we all know how it goes for us Celts with skin that’s practically see-through. Fake tan? Tried it. And by “tried,” I mean I once managed to turn myself into a patchy satsuma after missing whole swathes of my legs. Makeup? There was a time I’d attempt to bronze my face into something remotely resembling a living human, but these days I can barely muster the energy to slap on a bit of tinted moisturizer before running out the door.
And then there’s the tanning bed option, which, let’s be real, feels about as wise as juggling chainsaws while wearing stilettos. I’d rather be translucent than willingly baste myself in radiation and end up looking like a shrivelled raisin ten years down the line. So here I am, embracing my natural glow-in-the-dark aesthetic, while my fiancé swans around looking like the goddamn personification of a beach holiday.
Embracing the Glow
And so, dear readers, I must accept my fate as a ghostly beacon of Irishness—a fair-skinned spectre haunting a world of perennially bronzed gods. There are many things in this life I’ll never have: a year-round tan, a flawless fake-tan application, or a face that doesn’t look like it’s been lightly slapped with a wet fish. But we carry on, don’t we? Because if I’m going to be a ghostly Celt, at least I’ll be a bloody well-moisturized ghostly Celt.
So here’s to my fiancé and his infuriating eternal tan—a beacon of melanin privilege in my otherwise pale-as-hell existence. Cheers to him, and to all you lovely, pale-skinned comrades. Let’s wear our translucent, slightly pink, beautifully blue-veined skins with pride. Because some of us may never tan, but we will damn well glow.
