Would you spray a six pack on your summer? man for
As 1 in 7 British men now admits to using fake tan . . .
HOW daft the vanities of modern man. That was my thought as tanning specialist Jayne Cooper placed a crinkly shower cap on my head and invited me to step into her ‘booth’, a tall, quickassembly tent. I had stripped to my birthday suit, save by Quentin Letts for a pair of shorts and some ‘sticky feet’ — adhesive covers for the soles, to stop me slipping on the tent’s surface.
The morning’s mission: to transform my tripe-white, late-winter body into something brown and bootiful, like a basted Bernard Matthews turkey. Once ‘tanned’, I would then have my hot bod’s muscles visually improved by deft shading.
With so many men now going to gyms, the modern dude needs to look as though he works out with weights.
Hence the new art of ‘contouring’, cosmetics being applied to chest and flank to create an illusion of tautness and to minimalise any tendency for beer gut. The lovely Jayne, 36, from Derby, is one of the best in her trade. She has been professionally tanning for 17 years and has worked her magic on a host of celebrities, including Ant and Dec.
She took hold of an electric sprayer and tested its gunk on the inside of the
I firmly believe you should never spend your time being the ‘former’ anything CONDOLEEZZA RICE
transparent tent. there was a ‘phssssssht’ as a fine mist was emitted. it was the colour, roughly, of Angostura bitters.
‘Armpits!’ declared Jayne, and she proceeded to do her stuff. Ha! that tickled.
in the cause of journalistic research, i was submitting to what would once, for most British chaps, have been the most risible of conceits: not just a fake suntan but body contouring to boot. Ludicrous!
Back in the days of the Likely Lads, or even Men Behaving Badly, they would have made a tremendous joke out of such an idea. But there i was in Jayne’s booth, like a dented Ford Fiesta going in to the garage bodyshop for a respray. Apparently, everyone is at it these days.
JAyne was giving me two coatings of st tropez Classic, that being the brand and colour of warpaint she deemed suitable for my needs and skin type.
Other makes are available, as they say on Blue Peter, but apparently Posh spice uses st tropez. i supposed that was reassuring.
A proper suntan is a fine thing. Most of us look healthier and more handsome when we have been out in the sun for a week or so. Laughter lines form round our eyes. tanned skin seems somehow less wobbly and blancmange-ish.
For those of us in middle age, brown may not exactly look younger, but at least makes us feel more prosperous, like one of those smug, whitetoothed types in a life insurance or vitamins advert.
so much for a real tan. But a false one? is that not dishonest? And is there not a terrible danger of looking like permatan Hollywood lothario George Hamilton or prettyboy footballer Cristiano Ronaldo or even, horrors, former Cabinet minister Peter Hain?
‘Back!’ said Jayne, hooking me out of these daydreams. i turned around as commanded and she gave my rear quarters a good squirting, working the st tropez into my nooks and crannies like a motorist cleaning the insides of her wheel arches with a forecourt power carwash hose.
not that the spray was so forceful. A steady drizzle may be a more accurate comparison.
it was easy but, apparently, harmless to inhale. i had visions of sneezing bogeys as brown as chocolate raisins for days to come.
the stuff being applied was a mixture of dihydroxyacetone (a chemical found in sugar cane) and hydration ingredients including something called Veggietan. there was another ‘phssssssht’ as Jayne set about my inner flanks — i had to pose like John travolta, one leg forward, one arm raised. then there was a little bit of ‘brrrrrrrr’ from your correspondent, for the spray was on the chilly side.
Jayne disclosed that she once had a couple of chaps who demanded all-over tans, front and back, whatnots and all. Part of me shrivelled at the thought.
When male tanning sprays were first mentioned to me, i thought: ‘not on your nelly!’ then ‘what an extravagance’ and finally ‘how absurdly metrosexual’.
Perhaps that shows my age (54) and my geographical origins (born in Gloucestershire, live in Herefordshire, work mainly in London).
surveys show younger British men (those 30 and below) are turning increasingly to cosmetics, from moisturisers to pomades to body hair removers to spot concealers. Fake tans, which cost around £25 per session, are part of that trend, with 14 per cent of British men using fake tan. Male grooming is no longer thought camp.
While we have some way to go before we catch up with Brazilian men, the leading users of beauty products, the British market is one of the fastest-growing, now worth an estimated £608 million.
self-tanning goes back to the Fifties, when the market was led by a product called Man-tan. the tanning properties of dihydroxyacetone are said to have been discovered by a nurse who dropped it on a patient and, a day later, noticed their skin was stained brown.
you could argue that the same is true of, for instance, curry sauce, which contains the strongly coloured spice turmeric, but tanning liquids have greater staying power.
not that the early versions were necessarily so gorgeous. Man-tan and some of its rivals were said to leave dark tidemarks, and users found themselves referred to as tangerines, orangutans and (if the application had been overdone) walnut antiques.
things have improved, says Jayne. you can choose how
27 per cent of young men admit to having used fake tan
brown you want to go and how long you want the effect to last. The stuff she was using on me would last five to seven days.
One snag: after being sprayed, you should ideally wear loosefitting clothes for a few hours.
This is why many customers opt for evening sessions — they can slip into a dressing gown afterwards. If you are going to clamber straight back into office clothes, you may find they pick up some colour. I looked with sorrow at my T. M. Lewin shirt.
AfrIend had wound me up beforehand by saying I would need to wax. This was not true, thank goodness. I had also been told I’d smell of biscuits or stewed tea after being sprayed. There was a certain pong, perhaps more feminine than some blokes would wish.
The 21st-century British man may well be unfazed by the idea of men dolling themselves up before a holiday. Lads going away for a weekend abroad don’t want to spend the whole time looking as white as dulux Magnolia, so buy a pre-holiday tan.
It’s preferable to turning red and running the risk of skin cancer from too much direct sun. Self-tans were once the preserve of cheesy TV hosts (the late Bob Monkhouse was always vaguely terracotta) and I’m A Celebrity contestants (Peter Andre and Joey essex come to mind).
Pukka men would no sooner go in for a self-tan than they would say ‘serviette’ and ‘toilet’, and royal Ascot made it clear that racegoers the colour of Caramac would not be admitted to the more recherche enclosures.
But that was a few years back. We are all in touch with our inner david Beckham these days.
Jayne — who had pre-lubricated my ‘dry spots’ (wrists, ankles, hands and feet) with moisturiser — told me I was nearly done. I was glistening like a side of Peking duck in a Chinese restaurant window.
The St Tropez Classic did what it said on the packet. I was as brown as you may expect to be after a few days of sunbathing, but with two differences.
first, this tan was level and smooth all over — flawlessly so. Can that make you look a bit unreal? even a bit plastic? Maybe. There were no patches, as can happen when you fall asleep in the sun and a big white spot is left on your tummy where your book has been resting.
Second, the process had been painless. Well, almost. There were a couple of ouchy moments when Jayne ripped the ‘sticky feet’ off my soles.
finally, she set about contouring me. By using darker spray in certain places, a specialist can create trompe l’oeil effects, which deceive the eye into thinking you have better-defined muscles than is truly the case.
A few lines here and there and, bingo, your biceps balloon and your paunch appears more svelte. Such are the tricks of light. Soon, it looks as though you are sporting the beginnings of a Poldarkian six pack.
This struck me as a step too far. Though you could argue a little shading is no more than a woman does when accentuating her cheekbones with blusher, I feel it is snivelling behaviour to pretend you are some muscle-man when you have just had your contours painted on like go-faster stripes.
Inspire readers may mull on these matters and ponder them in their hearts. Should they encourage their husbands to go in for self-tanning before this summer’s beach outings?
When my wife and younger daughter heard I was going to be given a fake tan, they howled with laughter: Letts women are not known for their sympathy.
But once the spraying was done, everyone had to agree I did look less of a fright. Tans are slimming — especially with the help of contouring. They make the average British white man look less like a walking cadaver.
YOu have to be careful with your shirts, though (mine looked like a shoe-polishing rag afterwards). And you will find if you take a shower too soon, as I did, the run-off resembles a peaty donegal stream.
Two concluding observations. Part of the routine of a holiday in the sun is one’s slow acquisition of a tan. ‘You’re turning a nice colour,’ your wife may venture after day Three. You start to feel a little buzz of pride. If the tan has come out of a bottle, that frisson of pleasure will be lost.
And there’s this: in an age when we have happily learned not to judge people by their colour, are we really still so shallow, so obsessed by image and skintone, that we will go to such lengths to look the right hue on day One of a beach holiday?
If the answer to that is yes, as it may be, then a few moments in the tanning booth may be a good idea. But it would be a pity if we lost sight of the comicality of that search for the perfect tan.