If light skin is so desirable, why do white people get tans?

[KitSileya]

21. No, it's because white people are so secure in their privilege

For them, a tan doesn't mean increased discrimination, so they don't worry about it. Pretty much the whole world has internalized the belief that Caucasian beauty standards are the most desirable - if you don't have black hair and black eyes, you don't have to worry about not measuring up to the whiteness of these beauty standards, regardless of your weight, height, symmetry of face etc. Everyone will see that you're white and treat you accordingly. Believe me, it's quite a privilege, because as a brown-eyed, dark-haired girl in a Nordic country, I didn't need to tan too much before I got epithets thrown at me. Especially when it was fashionable to use your winter scarf to cover your head in the late 80s, a la a loose hijab, I was often mistaken for a Pakistani, and got a taste of what East Asian women live with all the time.

In addition, getting a tan has only been popular for white people since Coco Chanel stepped off the plane, exclaiming that a tan was a woman's best cosmetic. Before that, not having a tan was a sign of class. However, increasingly, among white people, a tan became a status symbol because it showed that you could travel in your holiday (here I'm talking about Europeans.)