10 Tanning Fun Facts & History
JULY 12, 2011 | INSPIRATION
Every bronzed beauty should know a few fun facts about the history of tanning. These 10 are some of the TEMPTU Team’s personal favorites.
1. In Ancient Rome, society had no fun in the sun. Romans used chalk to whiten their faces! Even centuries later, during the Renaissance and Elizabethan era, a ghostly glow trumpeted a bronzed one. Women would use lead-based white paints to get a pale porcelain complexion, and even drew blue veins on their skin to symbolize their “royal blue blood”.
2. The “Cereal God”, John Harvey Kellogg, did more than just come up with Corn Flakes, he created the Incandescent Light Bath or the 1st sun bed! This prototype tanning bed was marketed to cure several skin conditions and was even shipped out to the royal family at Buckingham Palace!
3. By the turn of the century, when diseases like Tuberculosis were on the rise, artificial sun lamps were all the rage giving rise to the birth of Heliotherapy or the sun cure. “A healthy tan” was born when Dr. August Rollier opened the 1st sun clinic in the Swiss Alps.
4. Bronzed skin took to the runway when fashion icon Coco Chanel captivated the world in 1923 after returning to Paris with a golden brown glow from a Riviera yacht vaycay. Four years later, British Vogue featured the first tanned faces in their chic magazine!
5. Mid 20th Century marked the beginnings of bronzer! Companies like Max Factor brought beige-to brown tinted powders on the MGM film lot, followed by FOX borrowing this bronzer frenzy on the set of its 1963 classic Cleopatra. Thanks to a liberal application of bronzing powder, Elizabeth Taylor will forever be remembered as the original beautifully bronzed Queen of the Nile!
6. The 60s also gave rise to the first sunless tanner. Coppertone’s Quick Tan or QT used DHA to transform pale skin tones to a lovely shade of orangey brown in just 3-5 hours.
7. In the 70’s an entire generation literally cooked their bodies in the sun using baby oil, tin foil, even vegetable shortening to achieve the darkest bronze tan possible in the summer months.
8. In 1986 the first SPF 15 was introduced, SPF 30 didn’t come around until 90’s. Pale was popular once again when photoaging, skin damage, and premature wrinkles were linked to too much sun.
9. Looking for an inner glow? Look no further than Functionalab’s line of nutricosmetics. The brand is coming out with Opti-Tan supplements or “sun supplements”. These pills contain a unique combination of beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamin E, and vitamin C, which have been shown to increase the body’s natural production of melanin, the pigment that gives tanned skin its golden hue.
10. Children of the Millennium are all about sporting a faux glow. Brands like Jergins, L’Oréal, St. Tropez, and now TEMPTU are constantly developing and improving at-home tanning products so tan fans can control their glow. Our BODY GLOW & TANNING STARTER KIT is not only super simple to use, but it gives you flawless, professional, long lasting bronze results from head to toe without harmful sun exposure! If you want professional looking glow whenever and wherever, airbrush is the way to go!
