It's just another typical Monday for you, a well-accomplished suit, stuck inside your corner office with an amazing view of the city below. You glare longingly outside at the sunshine, the tourists, and the tanned bodies in skimpy clothing heading off to the beach. Moments later, you lower your head only to be blinded by the paleness of your pasty white arms contrasting with your black trousers. You roll your eyes, remember the days when you had free time and laying in the sun was considered safe and healthy, and then you get back to writing that office memo.



Face it; you know that you and your gang of pale co-workers will not be seeing that sun for the rest of the summer. The weekends in New England are a toss-up, and there's been a lot of rain lately. To make matters even worse, you finally fit into that sexy salmon-colored gown you purchased for your best friend's black tie wedding, but you know that the fit won't matter much if the color of the gown is going to wash you out completely. "Who's that pale 50-year-old dressing too young for her age?" they'll all say. Maybe you're not completely opposed to going to a tanning salon and baking in a bed a couple times, but with your father's recent plight with melanoma, you're thinking it would be best to avoid that.

So you're in a predicament; you need a tan in a bottle. The main difference between tanning on the beach and sunless tanning is that tanning in direct sunlight will affect the pigment in the deeper layer of your epidermis while sunless tanning only changes the pigment in the top layer. The most effect type of sunless tanning product is one that contains dihydroxyacetone (DHA) because it has the ability to change the coloring of the top layer of skin.

DHA is extremely safe to use on the skin because the chemical originates from sugar beets and sugar cane. Once the amino acids naturally occurring in your body react with DHA, it creates pigments called melanoidins which are similar to melanin, and as a result, your skin turns a darker shade of brown just as if the UV rays from the sun were hitting it and creating higher levels of melanin. The main difference is that you won't receive any of the harmful side effects of the UV rays on your skin or in your eyes.

Now that you know how safe and effective sunless tanning is, and you realize that it's the solution to your problem, here are a few pointers to keep in mind before opening that bottle of golden goodness:

* Clean your body and lightly exfoliate your skin - especially the dryer areas.

* Moisturize everything, and then let it dry.

* Think about where you want that tan to be. If you're applying it to your face, be sure that all makeup has been removed first, and consider if you want to bronze your eyelids, on and behind your ears, your armpits, ...etc.

* Consider the heavy load of tanner that will be applied to the palms of your hands. You might want to wear gloves, or continuously wash those hands throughout the application.

* Follow timing directions closely; if the bottle of sunless tanner that you purchase instructs you to wait 15 minutes before getting dressed or 3-4 hours before sweating/showering/swimming then those instructions must be followed in order to ensure no brown spots on your clothing and no streaks or blotches later that day.

Picking the perfect sunless tanner shade for the color tone of your body will also help you to be sure that your coloring won't look orange and fake. Expect the tan to last 3-10 days (depending on brand, re-application, etc.) and try not to exfoliate certain parts of your body more or less than others throughout those days, as exfoliation in general will wash the tan off sooner. All in all, gaining and maintaining a sunless tan can be a very quick and easy process with extremely beneficial results. So next time you stare down at your white-as-rice arm or buy that 7th black dress because you're too light to wear a vibrant color, just remember what you're missing out on in that little bronze bottle of beautiful sunless tan.