Every Monday after a hot summer weekend I giggle to myself at the ridiculous tan lines and scorched necks circling around me on the subway. But perhaps this is a bad time to mock. I am about to embark on an extended beach trip, so who knows what sort of damage I’ll do to myself. Last summer I ended up with a cleavage burn. Not sexy.

The National Cancer Institute predicts that there will be more than one million new cases of skin cancer in the US in 2010. Despite being bombarded with scary statistics like this, I still see an awful lot of girls with gorgeous cafe au lait skin wandering around. And yes, my eye is still trained to think it looks good. I can’t help it. Mind you, it should be a golden tan–think Gisele–not a nuclear one (Hi, Snooki!).

I long ago gave up tanning. I’m blonde and pale, worried about cancer, and also exceptionally vain. Wrinkles, are much worse than pale skin, you know. So I valiantly apply my SPF 75 and have embraced my porcelain hue.

I’ve never tried tanning products, though I was briefly tempted by those tanning salon misting machines. Then a I saw a friend come out looking like a pumpkin.

A company recently sent us a self-tanning gadget to try, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it. I’m usually game for testing out gimmicky jeans or putting any sort of goo into my hair, but a home airbrush tanning machine? It’s just weird.

The box states, “Airbrush tanning is not a dye. The primary ingredient in the tanning solution works with the amino acids in the top layer of your skin to produce a natural tan exactly like the sun, but without damaging your skin.” All I could think of was Jeff Goldblum in The Fly and my DNA mixing with some strange chemical.

I still sometimes look longingly at the bronzers in Sephora, but for now I’ll rock my paleness and celebrate the natural look.

If your skin isn’t naturally tan thanks to genetics and ethnicity, what color are you right now? And how’d you get that way?