Two years I've been going to the same pool. You know me--I like to get brown in the summer, chasing my daughter's beautiful tone, her always one step ahead of me. Last year one of the moms and I used to chuckle because every day we ended our pool fest, we looked whiter than when we came.
"What is up with the flakes and sloughing?" She asked. Yes, she talks like that. Isn't she cool?
"I can't handle it," I say. "Hour after Hour I spend here trying to get the least bit non-anemic looking, and I'm actually going backwards! I'll be a frgging Sweede by the time the summer's over."
"What do you suppose it is--I mean, we shouldn't be getting whiter. I don't think chemically it's possible."
"I think it's the pool. I think they keep the water pH on whitey."
"I think so too; it's like a sloughing thing."
SO this year, we decided to experiment. And we found the key. Oil. The thicker the better. It doesn't matter if it has 299 sunscreen or 0 sunscreen, as long as it's oil, it manages to create a barrier against the sloughing detergents.
She and I have begun our tanning contest.
She's going the slow approach--from 50 down to 14 down to 8 SPF. BUT she gets to add in a trip to florid in July (no fair!)
Me? I've found THE tanning oil. On an old shelf at Big Lots, behind all of the safe 60 SPF cream, was a bottle of $2.49 no-sunscreen-added oil with the initial ingredient of Mink Oil.
The same mom friend, a vegetitarian, asked: "What's the new oil? You're getting darker."
I tell her. She wants to see the bottle.
"My God it has mink oil in it--you're coating yourself with dead animal."
"You think? They probably just milk them."
"No, dear. I don't think that's how it's done."
"Well, It's working, I know that."
"What's it feel like?"
"Makes me fell kind of like road kill."
While she's in Florida using her slo-tan, animal friendly tanning techniqiue, I'll be splashing on my road-kill special.
We'll see whose tan rocks by the end of the summer.
[[*No minks were harmed in the making of this post, at least.]]
