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Comment by brap | Hacker News Reader

I’m naturally pretty pale and don’t get much sunlight, I feel like I look like shit unless I get just a little bit of tan. What most people would consider just a healthy looking “baseline”. It also puts me in a better mood although that may be entirely psychological.

When I was younger I used to intentionally tan for short durations, but now I realize that’s harmful so I just embrace the cave gollum look

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I am white as paper, probably one of the palest people and I live in Asia and often get comment that I have the dream skin. While back at home my parents were teasing me about being a ghost and doctors asking am I sick. Interesting how it changes on cultural basis

I think it’s more than just cultural. Yes, it’s definitely a factor, and there are cultures and there were times where paper white was considered beautiful.

But I think on some level we naturally associate severe paleness with being sick or non-social.

I say this as the original commenter

Not sure really I am not an expert on this, where I live now and look at some of the wealthy people, they are extremely white like on purpose. Some of the leading politicians too. In fact, it's a bit difficult to find a very dark skinned celebrity or a powerful politician here, there are some but not many at all.

To me personally, I like naturally tan skin (like Asian natural skin) > natural white skin > artificial tanned skin > heavy tanning. Tanned white people just do not look good to me.

If you asked someone else where I live now, I bet answer would be different

To me, something like RFK Junior skin looks disgusting. I always wince when I see a picture of him, like you could make that into leather bag.

The mood is probably part light and part vitamin D. The latter can be supplemented. The former can be reproduced with a full spectrum bright lamp or brief sun exposure in the morning.

I've tried all kinds of Vitamin D/bright bulbs/staring at the sun over the years and they do nothing for my mood

I mean sort of but you should probably just get some sun if you can. There’s such a thing as too much tanning, sure, but getting no sun is not healthy either.

Be sure you're taking care of your skin doing it, though. Get the good European sunscreens and so on, you don't want to age yourself prematurely.

Just eat/drink a lot of carrots instead.

Orange is the new tan?

Why don't you just spend time outside a little bit?

Exposing large amounts of skin to the sun has other health risks when it is freezing outside. :)

Vitamin D deficiency is very common in Canada particularly during winter. The government recommends that everyone intentionally seek out vitamin D rich foods, or to take a supplement.

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