ジャッキーの これ、どう思う？ While we're on the topic ...

日傘は歴史小説や時代映画の中だけに存在するのかと思っていたら・・・　　YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

It's getting warmer now, which means I'm spending more time outside, which means I'm getting tanned. I love it when my skin gets a little tanned. It's a complex kind of love, though. Let me explain why.

I grew up in the Prairies of Canada where it's very cold in the winter and fairly hot in the summer (but not as hot as Japan). Sure, we used sunscreen as kids, but I don't have much memory of the sun as something to fear, or something to protect myself from. And by the time I was a teenager, the idea of becoming browner was something I desired. I was not alone in admiring tanned skin. In fact, I think it's fair to say that having a tan is widely considered beautiful in modern Western culture.

This is a full reversal of Western values from the end of the 19th century. In Victorian England, for example, white skin was revered because, among other reasons, darker skin was seen as reflecting the working class, who often worked outside. Nowadays tanned skin is associated with leisure and an upper-class lifestyle. The untanned masses are those of us working in offices or factories all day long.

In a way, Japan still seems to have a positively Victorian attitude toward skin color and tanning: the view that lightness and whiteness are to be prized. I wonder if this has any connections to Japan being influenced a great deal by Britain during the Victorian era. Even the Japanese affinity for parasols strikes me as Victorian. I thought parasols only existed in historical novels and films until I lived in Japan. The same goes for sleeve extenders and summer gloves. I find them all a bit kooky, if I'm honest.

But sporting a parasol is one thing and bleaching your skin is another. I find it horrifying that there are skin bleaching cosmetic products all over the world, especially in Asia. People in turn-of-the-century Britain used to put creams on their faces to make them whiter, and of course these all turned out to have toxins in them — lead, arsenic, what have you.

As a white person, it feels very creepy to me that white skin should be coveted by any culture, anywhere. In light of the history of colonialism around the world, it feels wrong and basically racist to sincerely believe one skin color to be superior to another. Call me a hippie, but can't we all just be whoever and however we are? It makes me crazy!

I'm interested in the 1990s Japanese trend of ganguro, where girls seemed to be over-tanning and effectively darkening their skin. From what I understand, this was meant by some as a political response to the mainstream obsession with white skin. I think that attitude is cool, in a punk-rock sort of way.

That being said, I don't condone the use of tanning beds. I think they are crazy and horrible and should be illegal. I understand that getting a little extra vitamin D from the sun is good for everyone, but visiting a tanning bed seems like asking to get cancer. And I'll admit I used to go to them.

What's funny is that when I went through my tanning-bed phase (I was about 18, 19), my mom used to lecture me about how they were "cancer machines" and that I was silly to go to them. But our positions have completely reversed. Now she goes (she says that it's like a beauty treatment and it makes her feel better) and I'm the one that thinks she's nuts.

Finally, I have always wanted to express how confusing it was for me culturally to learn that in Japan, having freckles (or developing them over the summer) is considered undesirable, in terms of mainstream aesthetics. I think freckles are absolutely beautiful! I'm jealous of people who get them and I love it when my measly few pop out. But then again, I like the look of people who are a little sun-kissed. And what is a freckle but the lipstick stain of the sun?

Next time: My topic is ... mother-daughter time