A golden girl? No, I’d been Tangoed!

THE article about two young women who went to a tanning salon and ended up orange (Mail) made me smile. When I was at grammar school in the Sixties, I had a sudden urge to try the latest self-tanning lotion just on the market. It was an evil-smelling concoction to be rubbed into the skin, with instructions not to reapply for five hours. Impatient to see the wonderful golden tan promised on the bottle, I reapplied after two hours, then again and again, interspersed with trips to the mirror to see if anything was happening, but alas not. In a last-ditch effort, I applied another coat before bed. The next morning as I prepared for school I glanced in the mirror, having totally forgotten my eagerness to get a golden tan — and nearly fainted! The bottle said avoid the eye areas and under the nose and the lips. Staring back at me was a bronzed, shiny mask of horror. Huge white eyes, white lips and white nose and a totally white neck — I had forgotten that bit! I begged to stay home until I could scrub it off, but the bottle said it would last three to four weeks and my parents were having none of it. So there I was in full school uniform enduring weird stares on the bus. At school, my housemaster called me to the front of the class and turned me round and round under the electric light to get a closer look. The label on the self-tanning lotion was wrong. It took about six weeks to wear off — in patches!

C. D. Field, Mellieha, Malta.