I’ve always been that girl who criticizes other girls for fake/spray tanning. Being Colombian and travelling there often enough to maintain a subtle tan, I never understood the need for fake tans. My mom instilled a fear of tanning beds in me from a young age and after seeing a classmate in high school turn orange from a spray tan, I ruled out all faux tanning.
Cue 2015… After about a year of not visiting anywhere tropical and a summer in Nice, France where I religiously applied SPF 75, I got really. Really. Pale. With the holidays approaching, the warm weather and tons of glowing reviews on self tanners, I decided it was time to get over myself and try an at home self tanner.
I combed through review after review of self tanning products. My ideal product was the Extra Dark mousse from Loving Tan but the price ($39.95) and shipping time were discouraging (the product comes from Australia). I finally settled on Jergen’s Instant Sun tanning mousse in Deep Bronze. A) because it was fairly inexpensive and B) because it was the only one I found at my local Rite Aid.
My biggest fear was ending up with a streaky and orange tan. However, after the countless hours of reading mainly positive reviews I felt reassured that nothing could go wrong as long as I followed the instructions to a T. I decided to apply the mousse around 7 p.m. Before starting, I jumped in the shower, shaved and exfoliated with “frank body traditional body scrub” in “tough.” An amazing scrub I got during the Her Campus New York Fashion Show. It’s made mainly from fresh ground coffee as well as sweet almond oil, brown sugar, sea salt and orange essence. It smells heavenly and is easily my favorite body scrub.
Once I was out of the shower I applied generous amounts of moisturizer to my ankles, knees, elbows and wrists. I used Vaseline’s cocoa butter since my skin gets ashy pretty easily.
I started applying the product by small sections since it does “dry” fairly quickly. I worked on my arms first, then legs and finally my torso. I chose not to use a glove (usually recommened) simply because I couldn’t find one and figured it’d be easy enough to wash the color off my hands.
It was really easy to make sure the areas blended in well as long as I applied the tanner in circular motions and in good lighting. The hardest part was applying it on my back. There were areas that were hard to reach and none the less hard to massage the product into. I would recommend having someone to help. The product dried fairly quickly but it did leave a feeling of stickiness that took a few hours to go away. The color showed faintly but since my skin is already olive toned I didn’t see a big difference.
To avoid having orange palms I quickly washed my fingers with an antibacterial soap and with some more of the exfoliate I’d used earlier. It left only a small tint of orange on my fingers that I probably could have removed if I’d scrubbed a bit harder.
For my first experience applying self tanner I found that the smell wasn’t horrible, a bit tropical but still not pleasant. It was really, really strong. It started getting annoying after a while for me and the people I was with later that night.
I went on with my night as I normally would. I wore dark loose clothing and did my best to avoid sweating. To pass the time I decided to bake brownies. This is where I made a huge newbie mistake. I decided to wash dishes after putting the brownies in the oven. I don’t know if this is a known fact, but I don’t think you’re supposed to let the sections with self tanner on them come in contact with water. I didn’t notice anything after washing the dishes and after a couple more hours I went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning I was about one shade darker than I’d been the night before. Granted, I’d been hoping for a more drastic outcome but overall I was satisfied with the color – mainly because it wasn’t orange. It looked almost exactly like what my natural tan would look like and only about 4% orange-ish. The real shock was the white splatter marks on my wrists from washing the dishes. I decided to reapply some of the mousse on the spots but it didn’t help very much.
The tan started to fade within a week of applying it (the normal rate). I was careful to moisturize daily to avoid streaking; however, I did notice some streaking after about three days. I was happy enough with the results that I’d consider reapplying it for an event. However, I don’t think I could apply it every week.