African for a Day

A friend told me about a spa that was giving away free spa tans, so I went to check it out. I learned that nothing comes for free, everything comes at a price...

I wore nothing but disposable undergarments while a woman airbrushed every bit of my pasty white body. It was darker than I had expected and judging by the concerned face of the airbrusher, it was much darker than she has ever seen. She attempted to convince me that it would look good by using phrases like "looks natural" and " will blend later."

After this humiliating experience, I looked in the mirror and felt strangely confident. Not because I had new tan, but because I had a completely new ethnicity!

I met friends for lunch, and they immediately dubbed me with a new moniker, Nooki Nooki, to match my newfound African heritage. I proudly walked all around all day, running errands with my new creamy mocha skin. It was going great, until it started to get warm and my new heritage began to bubble up and drip. I started to look spotty. Not like someone with freckles or poor pigmentation, but someone who was filthy.

My husband told me that I looked less African, and more like someone stranded in the Serengeti. In a matter of hours I went from exotic to filthy.

I took the 'if you love something, let it go' approach and finally broke down and showered. It was heart-breaking to watch my as ethnicity was rinsed away. My hopes and dreams of looking legit in a hip-hop video were washed down the drain. I had to remove the newly added "has street cred" from my resume.

After the thrill of being ethnic for a day, it was humbling to go back to being just another white woman, standing in line at Whole Foods.