Winter has blossomed. The sun is still shining, though it’s less influential than it is in the summer. Tanning beds are open and ready for use, prepared to give people that perfect bronze skin the distanced star can’t offer in the colder months. Tanning has been a major part of American culture since Coco Chanel popularized it in 1923. According to skincancer.org, Americans are more attracted to bronze and tanned skin. So why is it that my father continues to experience discrimination due to his darker skin? Isn’t it meant to be more attractive? More desired? Such popularity of tanning should not exist due to the raging presence of colorism.

According to news.uga.edu, colorism is “a form of discrimination, typically within a racial or ethnic group, favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin.” And it’s not as if colorism has ceased to exist. Take my father, for example. He talks to me constantly about how he’s deemed less than just because he has darker skin than his peers. Take South Korean and Indian culture, for example. A common practice is bleaching your skin so it remains lighter. Even take me, for example. I have found myself fearing darker-skinned people walking past me on the street, even though I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about. As amacad.org states, “As darkness increases…so does the probability of being perceived as dangerous, incompetent [and] ugly.”

Amacad.org also mentions how colorism has been rampant in America since slavery, with lighter-skinned slaves being favored by their white masters, able to work in the house while the darker-skinned slaves were subjected to the fields. And though the idea of tanning is relatively new compared to slavery, it’s just as present. According to personalcareinsights.com, 28 percent of Gen Z survey respondents said getting a tan was more important to them than preventing skin cancer.

Relating to the importance of tanning, “passing,” as news.uga.edu states, is a phenomenon where people of color tweak their outward appearance to look more white. Black people in the Jim Crow South (1877-1968) changed their physical appearance to “look more white” so they wouldn’t face discrimination. But passing can also work in the reverse. Think of all the celebrities who purposely tan to make themselves look more like people of color: Ursula Andress, George Hamilton, Hugh Jackman, Kylie Jenner, Ariana Grande (where she even went so far as to also don a “Blackccent”), Kim Kardashian and many others.

It’s disheartening to see so many white people take the stage with darker skin and be celebrated, while darker-skinned people are pushed to the side and discriminated against. And though my skin is similarly as light as my white peers, I see the discrimination against darker-skinned people to my left, and the praised tanned white people to my right. And I wonder how such a corrupt paradox can exist.