Spray what?

This could get ugly.

“Put this on,” she said to me, handing me what appeared to be a package of over-sized dental floss. “And this is for your head. Okay?” I nodded at the hairnet now in my possession. I love a hairnet. “And these go on your feet,” she gestured downward, holding up two cutout paper footprints. She was smiling so as to really sell it.

“Um, okay,” I replied. What other response was there?

I had come in willingly, a bit over-enthusiastic if I’m being honest. With Labor Day on the horizon and a tropical locale calling, the prospect of looking just a little bit better, a little bit more fabulous—I should have known I was in trouble then—had finally proved too powerful to resist. Like a pig to the slaughter, I was getting a spray tan.

Ah, the beauty of a tan. Long associated with all things sexy, the tan is an icon, a desire, a thing to be attained. The tan is a Slim Aarons photograph embodied, the Ban de Soleil jingle you could never get out of your head, the youthful behind of little Miss Coppertone. The tan is the very definition of “vacation;” a symbol of beauty and health, of sex and sporting, of a life well lived and the promise of a body that looks even better naked. The tan is the state of California, the Côte d'Azur, Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit, Jackie O on Capri, the epic entertainment that was Baywatch.

The tan is George Hamilton.

The tan is an activity, “tanning” being an active verb or as Wikipedia’s master-of-the-obvious genius puts it, “People who deliberately tan their skin by exposure to the sun engage in a passive recreational activity of sun bathing.” Indeed, “sun bathing” sounds decidedly more luxurious than “tanning.” Because who among us doesn’t want to bathe in the warm sun, emerging perfectly sun-kissed and evenly bronzed, never burned (or blotchy, blistery, freckled to the nines, a.k.a., reality)? But being tan wasn’t always considered a luxury. Prior to the early twentieth century, tan skin was looked down upon as low class, something only those that toiled outside doing menial manual labor jobs had. Having pale, fair skin was the cultural ideal. God, I could have killed it in 1902.

The tan we have come to worship owes its status as a haute look in part to Coco Chanel whose accidental post-vacation glow caused a stir in 1920s Paris, sending her social circle into a frenzy as they found yet another thing of Coco’s to envy and emulate. The 1940s and 1950s saw the invention of the bikini and ridiculously aggressive methods of accelerating a tan, like the reflective silver folding collar and the use of oil, which now seem like the surest way to singe your entire face off. By the 1960s and 1970s, the tan was the height of glamour; the earmark of a sexy, jet set lifestyle and everyone who was anyone had a tan. Sex symbols like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda were pictured frolicking on the beaches of Saint Tropez and Malibu, respectively, enjoying the charmed, tan, highly sexed up life onlookers could only dream of.

And young George Hamilton was right there with them.

The tan had now come full circle from its days as evidence of a low-class existence, coming to be seen as a symbol of wealth. After all, who but those on eternal vacation have that unseasonable glow (uh, those that work outside for a living; those that have natural pigment in their skin; those who enjoy outdoor recreation)? The excess of the 1980s and early 1990s only added more fuel to the tanning fire, with indoor tanning beds coming into prominence. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a renewed focus on health and awareness by consumers, but the tanning industry’s growth remained steady. According to IBISWorld, the indoor tanning industry alone had roughly $3 billion in revenues in 2014, with ultraviolet (UV) tanning making up 57.2% of the revenues—a figure that is a horrifyingly direct indication that people are not listening to the facts about UV rays and skin cancer, but I digress. This is, after all, a piece about getting sprayed down with gunky brown dye, a much more highbrow way of achieving that sought after glow.

In a world obsessed with beauty and the eternal quest to look hotter and sexier than ever, achieving a perfect tan is obviously big business, but with UV tanning beds being cancer chambers and self-tanning creams often having the pesky problem of streaking and uneven appearance, spray tanning seems like the magic solution. The pigment gained from sunless tanning comes from nothing more than a carbohydrate called dihydroxyacetone (DHA) that sits on the surface of the skin, never penetrating it unlike UV tanning. New York City is home to a seemingly unending number of spray tan “salons” with names that invoke a feeling of beachy hotness like Brazil Bronze, Ibiza Sun, Shade Bar and Sun Club—hey, let’s all get tan together, baby. A stop at the spray tan salon is requisite prep for many photo shoots and fashion shows throughout the city, and corporate accounts at these faux sun temples are commonplace. Should you not be able to make it to the salon, your personalized spray tan professional is happy to come to you, complete with portable spray equipment and the color palette of your choice. Did I mention the hairnet?

Women and men (yeah, guy) all over Manhattan purchase annual packages to “maintain” their bronzed god look. But that tanned torso doesn’t come cheap. Single spray tans in a salon begin at $50 on average and the price skyrockets from there based on various add-ons, which, as you can imagine, are appropriately ridiculous. Cellulite Anihilator anyone? Considering those prices and the fact that a six-ounce tube of drug-store brand self-tanning cream costs less than ten dollars, it’s no wonder you see so many orange-hued, streaky legs walking the streets of NYC during the warmer months of the year. We are nothing if not slaves to our appearance.

And our own ridiculousness.

Speaking of slaves, I got undressed and picked up the dental floss. Unwrapping the small, rolled package (which briefly reminded me of a miniature sushi bar hot towel and then I was hungry which was a whole other issue), I was surprised to find an object that was actually more like a huge paper maxi pad suspended on a piece of dental floss. All the better to cover up your private parts, my dear.

I stood in the spray chamber, naked except for the dental floss, paper footpads stuck to my feet, sexy hairnet adorning my head—the “ears out or in” battle had been hard fought. It was freezing. My skin had goose bumps, surely no good for the spray that was to come. “It’ll feel like a nice, cool mist,” she had told me earlier. Um, okay.

Then it began. She entered the chamber nonchalantly, as if unaware of this vision standing before her, and picked up her spray gun—an item which no doubt has its origins in the pesticide spray cans of our forefathers. “Arms up like this,” she demonstrated. I was not told there would be calisthenics. Is this what George Hamilton has to go through? What followed was a series of moves that must have been invented by someone whose parents practiced the Kama Sutra and enjoyed Twister marathons. Forget the fact that I was standing there bare-assed, except for the dental floss (so, completely bare-assed), every inch of me exposed to this woman, but I was now doing moves no one should ever observe another human doing. My “spray technician” couldn’t have cared less, “I see naked people all the time,” she laughed.

I faked a smile as if to say, “Yeah, I get naked in a small, cold room, wear a hairnet and dental floss, and get sprayed down with brown gunk all the time too. No big.”

But she was right. It did feel like a cool mist. As I stood there, eyes closed, breathing through my nose for fear of anything else, the mixture of the cooling sensation and the coconut scent the spray was giving off had me feeling like I was already on vacation. I began to relax. A feeling of calm set in. I took a deep breath. How about a rum drink?

Then she came to my face. “Okay,” she said, “Keep your eyes closed, take a big breath and don’t breathe in again until I tell you to.” Shit, was there some toxicity in this stuff? The next second she began to spray and I took in a huge breath of air, a reflex my body must have kicked in, the exact opposite of what I needed to do in order to combat the heavy mist going off in my face. I gagged so hard she stopped spraying and pulled back.

“Are you alright?” she asked. I was still gagging. Gagging in dental floss.

Immediately fearful that my tan would be uneven, I managed to utter, “I’m okay.” As I gasped for a breath of clean air, I realized that nothing mattered more than the tan now. I was no longer the priority, the tan was.

Give me tan or give me death. 

She shook her head and began spraying again, lingering over my face for a few more seconds for good measure. I was now holding my breath. I might pass out, but goddamn it, I was going to be tan. I heard the voice of my mom, with her trademark anti-fake tan viewpoint saying, “Honey, you’ll just end up looking like a Kardashian.” Was I becoming too dark?

“I think that’s good,” I said, exhaling.

She stopped spraying and rolled her eyes. She would tell me when it was good.

“Now I’m going to use the drying fan,” she began, “Stand right there.” Where was I going to go? It felt like I’d been in there for much longer than the seven minutes advertised. Maybe this was not such a great idea. God, I really have to go to the bathroom, I thought, my stomach rumbling.

“You’re almost finished. Just turn around.”

I turned around and faced the wall. As I stood there in the home stretch, my bare ass facing the esteemed spray tan technician, I closed my eyes again. I was no longer cold; my embarrassment and paranoia had warmed me up. The goose bumps had gone down and I’d found solace in my hairnet. Her small fan felt good on my skin and my mind drifted back to relaxation. Yeah, this was good.

“Okay, you’re all finished,” she said. I turned around to face her. “Now, no sweating and try not to let anything rub against your skin. Give it at least eight hours before you wash it off.”

Eight hours? It was 4 p.m. now. So I was to walk around with swirls of sticky bronze tint on my body until after midnight? Shit.

“Um, okay,” I replied. What other response was there?

She left me alone. I stood there not knowing what to do. I had to protect my tan at all costs and any movement could jeopardize its prized outcome. After a minute or two, I ambled my way to my clothing. Every item I had would rub against me. Of course, the one day I should have just left the house with a bag on. But man, did I look tan. And not just in certain places. Surveying my body, every inch of me appeared to be extremely dark. I mean this was a tan. My legs looked like the legs of a continent hopping heiress. Yasss Bish.

I removed the bronzed hairnet (it was emotional, but we had to part) and peeled the footpads off of my feet. They were disgusting, leading to the revelation that my whole body was sticky. It was pretty gross, but man, was I tan. This was awesome. I would be the epitome of bronzed beauty in eight hours. Why hadn’t I done this before? Looking down at the dental floss I slipped it off.

Tan complete. Next stop beach goddess.

At exactly 12:01 a.m. I stood in the shower. Dirty brown water reminiscent of a silt runoff ran down my body and into the drain. No matter, I was tan. The whole shower was practically glowing from my presence. Eventually, the brown water turned clear and I knew my tan was complete. I couldn’t wait to see myself in the mirror. Stepping out of the shower I grabbed a towel and blotted myself dry. Eight hours later, I was taking the “no rubbing” instructions quite literally.

Sufficiently dry and ready to moisturize my sun-kissed glow, I stood before the mirror. Staring back at me was one killer tan, and one ridiculous tan line. It seemed the dental floss maxi pad had bitten me back. While I stood there in the spray chamber, bare-assed and enjoying the cool breeze, an un-tanned mass that looked like Peter Cottontail in a jock strap had taken up residence over my nether regions. Both front and back, for good measure.  Right where the dental floss had been.

Panicked, I stumbled to my closet and grabbed a bathing suit. Surely this tanning infraction could be covered up on the beach. I’d fend for myself while naked (don’t we all). But there it was, like the aftereffects of a tanning atomic bomb, a bright white mushroom cloud hovered above my bikini bottoms. It appeared to have been making a bid for my belly button, but was stopped about halfway up. I was in disbelief.

How had this happened? I'd attempted to follow her instructions to a T. And the dental floss had been paramount in my mind. Okay, so had the hairnet. Had it moved itself up? Had she given me one too large for my needs? I assumed they were one size fits all… ah, yes, one size fits all. Like oversized socks and that baseball hat that never fit you, the dental floss maxi pad was designed to cover up men and women of all sizes, but I was just one woman of one size. I should have folded it down or wedged it in somehow.

Wait, no on the wedging.

Now I had a tan and a problem (“I got 99 problems and a tan is one. Hit me.”). God, this was ridiculous. I had to do something.

Unwilling to accept defeat, I put my clothes on and headed to the drug store. I would buy a tube of self-tanner and fill in the space. Necessity is the mother of ridiculousness. And I am the master. 

As I walked down the block, I felt deflated. My prized glow had faded away and all that was left was the mushroom cloud growing out of my crotch.

But I would live to tan another day, I vowed. It’s not easy being George Hamilton.