In case you’ve been following closely for the past 29 years of my life… I am pale. With my heritage, I didn’t stand a chance. Most everything in my lineage is pale. I burn. I do not tan. I cannot get a base tan, and would appreciate you not asking me to.

But here’s the thing- I used to be self-conscious about it. I remember thinking how unfair it was everyone could get these pretty tans and I was always the same pale. I thought it was unfair that everyone else could just frolic in the sun without sunscreen and the few times I’ve done that in my life I’ve ended up purple from burns. I never understood it.

I once tried a fake tan. I looked like a pumpkin. Fake tans require you have a small amount of color on your skin that then blends in with the rest of the skin. I, however, have no color so I just looked exactly like the color sprayed on. It was awful.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve embraced it. I’ve learned to love it. It’s one of my signatures. I’m probably the palest girl in the room. I’m great about taking care of my skin now which means I’ll age more gracefully than many of my tanning peers. I don’t have as many wrinkles because I protect it. I will hopefully avoid the skin issues that have plagued the paler people in my family because I made a decision to be proactive about my skin care.

All that aside, the real reason I’ve learned to love my skin is I realized that being “tan” in order to be “hot” is giving a shit what someone else thinks of me. It’s caring about fitting into some sort of outside societal mold of beauty. And I get to choose whether I want that or not. And I don’t want it. I just want to be me. And I want to love myself for who I am. And who I am is a pale person with milky white skin and an aversion to too much direct sunlight.

And that’s that.