Charges of Racism at Salon Offering ‘Dark Chocolate’ Tans
“Dark Chocolate,” “Dark Ash Onyx,” and “Caramel” are just a few of the shades that spray-tan customers are opting for at a Swedish salon — whose owner is now facing backlash from women of color calling her “black face” and “racist,” she says, for offering hues that appear to make Caucasian customers look black.
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“Th-that’s that’s my skin color in a bottle. Wh-why…I don’t know whether to cry or rage,“ one commenter wrote on a Tumblr about the Stockholm tanning salon Emmaatan’s Instagram photos, which flaunt the superdark skin some of its customers are getting. The blog Black Girl With Long Hair called out the controversy on Thursday, sharing Emmaatan’s images in a post that’s sparked an important conversation about race and beauty.
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“Shaming dark skin is a foundational tenet of many beauty norms — not just in the United States, but worldwide,” the author writes. “So it is quite bizarre to see dark skin being bottled up and sold like this.” Her readers are thrown by the tans too, with reactions running the gamut from outrage — “They tell you dark skin is ugly then turn around and do this,” blasted one commenter — to amusement. “Good to see a company dedicated to how gorgeous our complexions are, to the point where they will try to bottle it,” remarked another.
Photo: emmaatan_/Instagram
Emmaatan salon owner Emma Patissier Alm, for her part, sees nothing wrong with offering customers the option of transforming their skin. “[People look] at my pic I’ve posted and without a blink assuming we desire to look black, I understand why it might seem that way,” Alm wrote on Instagram. She added, “My color isn’t going for black it’s going for a natural golden tan.” Insisting that “20-30% washes [off] and the color will get much much lighter and won’t look as ‘black’ as it seems on my pic,” Alm continues on to declare, “I love all skin types and that’s why I think ppl should be able to choose for what they feel good in.” Alm added that she will “never understand how ‘black ppl’ is facing the world” and remarked that “it’s sad to know ppl don’t get respect just because of their looks.”
The cultural implications of serious skin darkening in Sweden is not exactly parallel to that in the U.S., where white people longing for dark tans is particularly complex and ironic considering the history of racism here.
Photo: emmaatan_/Instagram
As one commenter, an American living in Europe, notes, “Many may be aware of the U.S. racial issues, our twisted history, but the bulk do not understand nor even think about the reality and the EFFECTS of things like blackface, and complexities of the racism in the US.”
But Reginald Daniel, PhD, author of More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order, tells Yahoo Beauty that fair folks who darken their skin to the degree of resembling another race owe it to that race to consider the impact of their actions.
“People who don’t have historical context don’t have sensitivity,” he acknowledges, “but there is no question in my mind that tanning is part of a history of appropriation. It’s taking things of another group and making them ‘mine’ without having to experience living that life.” Going dark for a day or a week turns tanning “into a race trait,” explains Daniel, a University of California, Santa Barbara sociology professor and member of the Advisory Board of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans. “In doing so, they’re trivializing the whole black experience.”
“There is a responsibility to this,” Daniel adds. “I’d ask, ‘How long are you planning to do this? Are you wearing this to the next job interview?’ Because there’s a luxury to having black skin — with the detachment from a lifetime of having to face the backlash and challenges of being born that way. It minimizes the experiences of people who have to face the reality of looking like that for their whole life.”
Top photo: emmaatan_/Instagram