Tan-Tastic
By Hannah Isom
Young wealthy Chinese citizens are proving that brown is the new white by flocking to newly opened tanning salons in Shanghai."Tanned skin looks great on me" says Ye, a young Chinese yuppie who takes sunbeds twice a week, "I like to hear my friends saying how fresh and healthy I look". Changing fashions and an increasingly Western culture are it seems having an impact on the traditional opinions about skin colour.
For centuries, Chinese people favoured a pale complexion and associated a darker hue with poorer, manual labourers who work out in the sun all day long. People with pale, white skin however, were seen as better educated and wealthier.
In Shanghai today, having a nice tan is increasingly seen as a status symbol, especially since the salons offering the treatment charge the average worker's monthly salary for 1 month's treatment course. In contrast to the trend in the UK, the majority (around 70%) of Chinese salon customers are men. Other tan-tastic clientele include the young and trendy and those who have lived abroad and wish to show off their new-found "sophistication".
Yet despite the growing popularity of tanning in China, the industry still has a long way to go to even dent the multi-million dollar market in skin lightening creams.
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