The Perks of Being Pale

Myself and many others are lucky enough to be blessed with the stubborn 'I will not tan' skin gene, meaning we are sunburnt through factor 50 sunscreen, not just on summer holidays, but also in England! (Well, on the few sunny days there actually are in England) As we get older and wiser, we also develop a phobia of the equator and become convinced it was put there as a death trap for us pale-skinned folk, so we're forced to avoid holidaying in places such as Dubai and The Caribbean and 'staycations' become more our thing. In spite of this, hundreds of the fair-skinned tribe, myself included, still brave the strong sun rays and take an annual summer break to somewhere intensely hot.
After all, I've always been taught that facing your fears is good thing!

 Forever Fashionable

To begin with, the first and foremost obvious perk to being pale is of course the fantastic tomato colour we turn when spending any time in the sun. This colour tends to last for a few days and causes us to spend the summer how we spend every other day of our lives - indoors and on the internet. Or for those wanting to go for a more crimson shade, more time in the sun is required.
Peeling red skin is the summer trend that never goes out of fashion and us pale-skinned fashionistas are able rock this look year after year without fail. Painful sunburn is always the cherry on top of a perfect summer holiday and holidays for us just wouldn't be the same without it.
Many of us can even pull off the 'patterned sunburn' look, allowing us to strut down the promenade with everyone staring in awe. Although they're making cringing faces and giving us sympathetic looks, you can tell this is just to cover up their jealousy of our burn lines, while they shamefully try to hide their tan lines. Here is an example of some extremely painful (but nonetheless fashionable) sunburn I gained in Cyprus last summer.

The everlasting search for 'The One'

Another perk of having skin the colour of tipp-ex is the fun we have whilst searching for that perfect foundation. Hours of our lives are spent googling things such as 'foundation for pale skin' 'WHERE CAN I GET SOME GODDAMN PALE FOUNDATION???!!!' in hope of finding a brand kind enough to create a product of a suitable shade. The process of actually testing foundation however is very simple for us. We just walk into Boots (or Debenhams for those upper class ones amongst us) and head straight to the lightest shade each brand sells, but usually just to find that each and every one still makes us look orange. Oh and even better, when we finally find a foundation thinking 'YES! This is the one!' only to put it on at home and it's suddenly became 10 shades darker than it looked in the shop.
Just the other week, I had a consultation with Clinique where I expressed my difficulty in finding a foundation light enough in the hope they would have one for me. Instead, I was sent away with a small sample of their 'CC cream' as their foundations didn't cater for people like me.
So far I'm impressed with the CC cream however it's almost exactly the same colour as Rimmel's Match Perfection in the colour '010 Light Porcelain' which I discovered a few months ago and is also a lot cheaper than the CC cream so I think I will stick with Rimmel for now, until I can find an even lighter colour.

Meeting Society's Standards

Maybe the reason for the lack of fair coloured foundations is due to the fact that it's recently become socially unacceptable for anyone without a tan to dare to go out in shorts in summer, but that doesn't matter, I mean there's plenty of fake tan to go around, right? And it's not like we mind forever smelling of biscuits or having to spend a large percentage of our well earnt money to fit in with society's standards - decent fake tan is not cheap fyi!
Fake tan isn't the easiest thing to apply either you know, and life is made 1000x better when we've spent our own precious time and money to make ourselves look that healthy tangarine colour just to find we're covered in streaks leaving us with that awful decision... Streaky fake tan or pale legs?
Most people adopt the streaky fake tan option; at least that way other people know they have made an effort in trying to hide their shamefully white legs.
Those hipsters among us who say that having a tan is just 'too mainstream' like to take the other option - to just not bother with fake tan - and here is a picture of me bucking the trend (although I don't class myself as hipster - just too lazy and too poor). I have been described as looking as though I've spent my whole life hiding from the sun and I've even been compared to an albino rabbit before and I still haven't worked out whether or not that's an insult?!

So what do you think, are we blessed to be pale or is it some sort of punishment? Are you a part of the 'untanable' tribe or do you have beautifully tanned skin?

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The End of an Era

~ JCL - The Best Tutor Group!! ~

So yesterday was an emotional day as it was the end to 5 years of hard work and studying procrastinating and daydreaming at secondary school.

Leaving school however, meant it was also the beginning to a three and a half month summer break (although it's feeling more like autumn right now) in which I do not have a lot to do - which is one of the reasons why I decided to start blogging. I've wanted to start a blog for a while and now that my GCSEs are nearly over, I thought it would be a good time to begin!

~ Baby JCL - Red Nose Day Back in Year 7! ~

 One Big Happy (Crazy) Family

My tutor group is definately one of my fondest memories of secondary school; it's difficult for 23 people to all get on well but somehow we did! In most tutors, there are cliques and people only mingle within their own friend groups but JCL was always different; everyone always spoke to everyone and we'd have group discussions, debates and we even had inside jokes between all 23 of us.

We prided ourselves in being the most out of control tutor group - other teachers would always complain about us and we'd spend tutor doing things like backflipping off tables and climbing or shouting out of windows (lazy people like me who did not partake in anything involving standing up would instead cheer them on and record what was happening using phones or ipods) - which resulted in us never winning any of the 'tutor awards' that were frequently given out.
I'm pretty sure that's an award in itself though... the first tutor group never to have won anything?

The craziness continued throughout the 5 years but died down when we reached year 11. And no, that's not because we'd all matured and wanted to focus on our GCSEs; it was because our old form tutor had left us to retire and our new form tutors were a lot stricter (yes, we were that bad that one wasn't enough!) The fact that we had to walk up 4 flights of stairs to get to our new tutor room didn't help either - no one had any energy once they'd reached the classroom!
It was always funny though as I was usually one of the first to arrive so I had the pleasure of watching everyone practically crawling into the classroom, breathing heavily and collapsing into their chairs, complaining about how much their legs hurt. EVERY SINGLE MORNING.

Facebook Photos?!

~ An example of one of the many unfortunate photos ~

I signed onto facebook this morning, finding out I'd been tagged in 45 photos from yesterday; so immediately I was horrified and began looking through them all as quickly as possible, begging there were none that were too unfortunate.

Sadly, there were.

 

 

Fortunately, I did not have that expression in all 45 photos

~ 'The Cwrew' (yes that extra w is there for a reason) (no I am not going to explain that reason) ~

~ One of those awkward photos where you don't know what to do with your arms ~

~ My friend dressed up as the joker to raise money for Cancer Research UK ~

~ Us 4 call ourselves 'RE buddies' because we all sit at the same table in RE lessons (very inventive name, I know) but I'll really miss our lessons that we just spent laughing hysterically ~

~ This facial expression seems to be reoccuring ~

 Traditions

Year 11s last day at my school is traditionally a day where teachers and younger students fear for their lives for many reasons including the following:

• Eggs are thrown - anyone other than year 11s are the usual targets
• Water guns are sprayed - again with the same targets
• The fire alarm is set off multiple times - everyone is forced into an area where they could be hit with eggs
• Stink bombs are set off - not a pleasant experience for your nose
• Washing up liquid in the toilets - not fun for the cleaners, or anyone who may need to go
• 200 deranged 16 year olds doing stupid things - many of whom are dressed as if they go to St Trinians

My year group however had a pathetic attempt at upholding this tradition and although we mostly behaved well, we were still kicked out of school half an hour early and the teachers refused to take a whole year photo, which everyone was disappointed about.
Luckily though, most people's dignity is still in tact, although I think I may have lost mine judging by the photos put on facebook.

I've heard that some schools go crazier than mine on their last day while others don't do anything unordinary on theirs, so let me know what your last day at secondary school was like if you've had it yet. If not, is it something you're looking forward to and are there any traditions for your last day?