This summer, I'm going to get a tan.

Tan middle aged woman summer, anyone?

This summer, I’m planning to tan again. Not like I tanned as a teenager with olive oil slathered on and no drinking water in sight, but like a middle aged woman should: rarely, moisturized, and hydrated.

In 2021, after spending more than a year indoors, growing more and more sallow, I went to the beach in Miami without sunscreen. It was a terrible decision. And so stupid because after more than a year of wearing masks to protect my health (and the health of others), I likely doubled my chance of having skin cancer because my unprotected flesh got scorched.

I spent the rest of that trip with a painful, feverish second degree sunburn. Before that, I was a tan person with some freckles, after, I became a freckled person who sort of tans. It was the event that aged my skin.

I haven’t tanned properly since because I’m scared of sun damage. But this summer — the summer the U.S. bombed Iran unprovoked, the summer masked ICE agents kidnap and deport people without trials to third countries, the summer democracy was buried in America — I’m just going to let myself get at least one tan with my new dry, freckly skin.

Some of my happiest memories are laying out in the sun, crisping under swaying palm trees next to a body of water. Tanning is a multi-sensory experience: the Vitamin D feels great, but so does the sweat and heat, and I love the smells of a beach or pool day. It’s therapeutic, frankly.

This was the sunburn and requisite Coppertone photo.

I’ll be honest. I’m also going to tan for the same reasons I wasn’t tanning — superficial ones. The thing that got me to start using sunscreen was signs of aging. It feels sort of silly right now with the future so uncertain to be so cautious. Like, I use a tinted sunscreen to keep me from getting sun, but am adding artificial color back on my face. Every time I apply it, it kind of annoys me.

At the moment, not being able to age with a tan annoys me more. Let me turn into fruit leather if I want!

I know people have complicated feelings about their skin tone. I certainly did as a swarthy child in a mostly pale extended family. I decided to accept myself pretty early on because, then as now, I hated the false white supremacist notion that being fair is the ideal. Whatever your skin tone, it’s a good skin tone. Whether in nature or in culture, there is strength in diversity.

We’re literally on the brink of WWIII, can we not just love ourselves as we are?

I’m not trying to have another epic lockdown sunburn. I won’t go without sunscreen all summer, but I’m frankly tired of planning for the future of my body at this exact moment. I want to spend a summer in it, wearing a bikini, consuming chips and dip, lots of water, magazines, and enjoying my God-given melanin.