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When I visited Copenhagen and London recently, I was scandalised to note proudly displayed tan lines on the shoulders of chic girls everywhere. Whether it was outside the Baum und Pferdgarten front row or on Portobello Road, a deep bronze tan was offset by stark bikini outlines emerging from tank tops worn without bras (paired with jorts and Salomons) and strapless tops.
I’ve worked in the beauty industry for ten years, and within it, catching a sunburn is often equated with a kind of moral failing. The industry has become so diligent about communicating the message of sun safety that we scold those who don’t comply in a way we’d never dream of shaming someone who says they don’t apply retinol every night.
It’s a good thing we’re hyper-vigilant; in Australia, we know too well the risks of UV exposure. According to Cancer Australia, melanoma kills over one thousand Australians a year. But it seems this diligence has done little to halt a “sunburn aesthetic” from filtering through fashion.
In August 2024, Dazed published an article titled How Sunburns and Tan Lines Became an Aspirational Beauty Trend, noting that “as Euro summer winds down, there’s one trend that’s yet to fade—for a while at least. It seems sunburns are summer’s hottest beauty look.”
That same year, Addison Rae and Bella Hadid appeared in Perfect magazine with visible tan lines; models with similar markings popped up in Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso video, and Kim Kardashian showcased a ski mask–shaped sunburn in a Skims holiday campaign.
And last week, musician Kenzie Ziegler alarmed fans by getting tan lines tattooed on her body. The move, intended to promote her new single Tan Lines, was a literal take on the trend. Behind-the-scenes footage of her ink session with Los Angeles artist Christian Delacruz has already racked up 11.9 million views and 2,704 comments.
While a relatively obscure Dance Moms alum’s marketing stunt isn’t conclusive evidence that sunburn is back in high fashion, it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore that sun damage of all stripes is having a moment. Influencer Jemma Violet was recently covered by the BBC when she posted a now-deleted fake-tan tan-line tutorial for her 729.5k TikTok followers.
It struck me that while the mainstream beauty industry may raise a frozen, thoroughly SPF’d brow at tanning, our favourite makeup product—blush—is full of euphemisms for sunburn. We’ve seen the rise of the “blonzer,” a product that’s part blush, part bronzer, and entirely the pinky-red-brown hue many of us turn in the sun. Hailey Bieber’s line includes viral blush sticks named, ahem, “Tan Line”, “Freckle”, “Toasted Teddy” (a bronze terracotta), and “Sun Soak”.
@mackenzieziegler @Christian #tanlines #tattootok #newmusic ♬ Tan Lines teaser – kenzie
I, inadvertently, collected my own. In Australia, I rarely expose an inch of my SPF-coated skin to the sun. But in London, I felt at home, if not with my Irish/Scottish countrymen, but their adjacent cousins, and had a lapse in my usual regimen.
Wandering around Portobello markets, I caught a burn that wasn’t severe but was certainly visible. I woke from a post-nap haze in alarm: my shoulders were roasted, my chest pink, and,quel horreur, my cheeks were inflamed, and not just with Pat McGrath Divine Blush Colour Balm in Electric Bloom Glow, my go-to for that much-touted “sun-kissed flush.”
It struck me that while the mainstream beauty industry may raise a frozen, thoroughly SPF’d brow at tanning, our favourite makeup product—blush—is full of euphemisms for sunburn. We’ve seen the rise of the “blonzer,” a product that’s part blush, part bronzer, and entirely the pinky-red-brown hue many of us turn in the sun. Hailey Bieber’s line includes viral blush sticks named, ahem, “Tan Line”, “Freckle”, “Toasted Teddy” (a bronze terracotta), and “Sun Soak”. Charlotte Tilbury’s (excellent) Unreal Blush promises a “Healthy Glow.” When I interviewed Charlotte Tilbury earlier this year, the legendary makeup artist told me the blush colours were inspired by the post-Ibiza, sun-soaked complexions of the 2000s: Kate Moss, Gisele Bündchen.
The most fashionable way to apply blush has mimicked a sunburn—across the bridge of the nose, across the cheeks, dusted onto the chin, and dotted on the forehead. When I noticed my burn, I took a photo to remind myself so I could mimic with makeup later.
Dazed suggested that the vogue for tan lines is a way to signal you can afford a holiday, just as Coco Chanel did when she popularised the tan in the 1920s.
But I don’t think that’s the full story, especially given how hyper-aware we are of the consequences of sun damage. This month, Christine Emba wrote an essay for The New York Times called “Coming To Terms With Embodied Pleasure”. In the piece she discussed the return of cigarettes as “cool” in popular culture. While we know all about the detriments of smoking, cigarettes have cropped up in mainstream movies like The Materialists and are now “the accessory of choice” for celebrities like Paul Mescal and Charli XCX. Paparazzi shots of the Olsen twins smoking still dominate fashion meme accounts and cigarettes are popping up again in fashion campaigns.
Emba suggested this counterintuitive trend isn’t about the return of indie sleaze or some kind of generational nihalism, it’s about technology. She cites Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, which argues that our contact with the physical world has been compromised by technology. The generation re-adopting tan lines and reaching for cigarettes had in-person experiences wrenched from them during the pandemic, and many of us have yet to fully return to embodied life.
We have intimate conversations via text. We spend more time forming parasocial relationships with podcasters than building real ones. ChatGPT fills the role of best friend, therapist, and even lover. After over a decade of technology-mediated romance, some people are ditching the apps and opting for ChatGPT partners (these people were devastated when said partners were destroyed in a recent OpenAI update; love, no matter the platform, has its risks). Even when we get outdoors, we filter the experience through a lens—our iPhones. In this context, cigarettes feel as charmingly analog as a steam-powered train.
Related: The Most Stylish People On The Ground At Copenhagen Fashion Week
Sunburn, like the red raw feeling at the back of your throat after a night on the darts, is most often the viscerally unpleasant reminder of a good time. A day at the beach. A music festival. An afternoon when you simply forgot to reapply because you were having too much fun.
Whether you call it being “sun-kissed” or achieving a “faux glow,” it makes sense that we’re craving beauty products that make us not just look but feel like we’ve lived. I don’t like being sunburnt, but mine followed a day of walking aimless miles with my phone on 5% battery. The ache in my legs reminded me how little time I spend outdoors. At some point while admiring rich people’s houses and perving on hot couples of Portobello Road I forgot about my exterior. As someone who works in the beauty industry, that’s rare.
My day-to-day includes a commute before sunrise and an 8-to-whenever job that requires watching the internet like a hawk. I can go an entire day forgetting I’m a human being with legs, arms, and a vitamin D deficiency—until 4pm hits and I need a “fridge cigarette” and a vending-machine protein bar (a solidified cake-sludge that is neither healthy nor a treat, just a sweet block of crumbs that fills the gnawing hunger that reminds me I’m alive until dinner time).
Essentially, like the subjects of Emba’s piece, I’m disembodied. And like Paul Mescal and Charli XCX, I’m finding some comfort in a reminder I’m alive that’s viscerally bad for me. That’s not to say smoking or sunburn are good. Both will age you, both can kill you. But when the duelling banjos of modern beauty are a drug that makes you forget to eat and a toxin that paralyses your face, a tan line can seem almost wholesome.
About remembering we’re living, breathing human bodies. Not just machines to be microneedled, peeled, filled, and frozen.
There is, of course, a middle ground. One that doesn’t involve premature ageing or melanoma. Spend more time outside. See a friend you usually just voice note. Live in the moment. And, yes, apply SPF with your Rhode blush, wear a hat, and seek shade.
The post Tan Lines Are Back – But What Is Beauty Really Romanticising? appeared first on ELLE.
