As the tan fades from the culture, I will finally let go of sun worship | Jess CartnerMorley

In the mid-1980s, Bergasol ran a series of advertisements in magazines and billboards for suntan oil. My recollection of these is remarkable as five minutes ago I dug through my bag for my phone but by the time I located it had no recollection of who I had expected to call. And if I go upstairs to get something, I have to recite the name softly. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes. With suntan oil commercials burning my retinas decades later.

Two women are sitting by a swimming pool wearing nothing but silver bikini bottoms. They're facing the camera, so it's not rude but definitely a little spicy for the pre-internet era. They are identical, down to their blonde French braid hair, except one is pale and the other is deeply tanned. The campaign ran with several slogans, but the one I remember best is the one where the pale woman says, “£4.50 for a suntan oil? You could buy three champagne cocktails for that. To which her tanned friend replies, "I never have to."

What I took away from this commercial is that tanning was the competition sport par excellence of the summer. I wasn't dumb enough to fall for the idea that shelling out for beauty products so you don't have to pay for your own booze was a wise financial investment, but I took the bronze-woman's message to heart. wins, and has spent most summers since obsessing over brown, browner, browner. This both despite and because of the fact that my natural skin tone is the shade of shelf stable skimmed milk. And I wasn't alone: ​​in 2000, a survey showed that 50% of Britons said returning home with a tan was the main reason for going on holiday.

Like our understanding of the dangers of tanning has grown, most sane people have abandoned the cult of tanning. Once, after returning from Ibiza, a friend from the chic fashion industry said to me, "You know, Jess, aren't you, you're way too dark?" Reader, I took it as a compliment.

I finally come to my senses. Seeing women with skin as pale as mine showing off their un-spray tan on the red carpet helps. If Michelle Williams and Andie MacDowell don't need to be brunette at Cannes, maybe I don't need to be brunette for Latitude? And the narrow lens through which a tan obsession sees skin color - ignoring diversity, assuming everyone starts at a base level of white skin and aims for a "tropical" shade - to me gives the tic.

Tans are always a matter of status. It's just that health and wellness are inflections of the modern age. Which means lying on a lounger with a piña colada has become a retro image, and influencer Instagrams are all hikes, visors and salads. Suntans became fashionable when low-paid labor moved from fields to factories, and pale skin ceased to be a sign of leisure, and so they went out of style as the wrinkle-free midlife face became the look trophy.

But what works with a tan has set many holiday wardrobe rules. As tanning fades from culture, long cover-ups are replacing shorts and bandeau tops on the beaches. And there's no clearer sign that tanning has fallen out of favor than the shift from sleek bikinis to strappy one-pieces that criss-cross the body. Those Love Island-esque swimsuits that have cutouts in the abs or under the breasts would be disastrous, as far as the tan line is concerned. After weaning myself off my tanning obsession, I'm all about a cover-up. The strappy monokini, I'm not sure. Although I might feel different if I was tanned?