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anarchi.st

12:32 [why do white people find tanned white people more attractive?]. Talking as a Brit my understanding is that this is an artefact of our industrial revolution during which there was a dual shift in the indoor/outdoor habits of different economic classes...

Due to various push and pull factors at that time, large portions of the peasantry moved from agrarian lifestyle to urban lifestyles; instead of labouring outdoors in the countryside they would labour indoors in the new factories, textile mills, workhouses, etc. Result: poor white people were getting less tanned.

Driving that change, and profiting from it, was an emergent middle class of landowners and factory owners whose changing work patterns suddenly gave them greater leisure time, and new found wealth enabled them travel to the tropics. Result: rich and wealthy white people were getting more tanned.

IRRC, developments in transport and the cruise industry in the second half of the nineteenth century really accelerated global leisure travel and I believe it was around this time that being tanned became not only "acceptable" for white British people but perhaps even a status symbol. Because, if you were tanned and well spoken you must be able to afford to travel, right? Which, in turn, made tanning an aspiration for the white working class -- a thread you can follow through to the modern day "tanned"="sexy" phenomenon touched upon in the video.

5 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 9