Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s me with a golden-brown tan! Maybe I can’t fly, maybe I can’t lift a car and save your baby, but what I can do is wear neon yellow shorts without looking like an uncooked chicken. And no, I didn’t just hop off a cruise from the Caribbean. I didn’t even step outside today. No — this look came straight from a bottle.

The feeling of a fresh tan is euphoric and powerful — you just move differently. Lathering yourself up in brown foam, simmering for hours, and then washing it off to reveal you’ve molted away your ugliness and transformed from a measly 6 to a solid 8.5 — it’s priceless. Plus, I can get tan without frying my skin off in a tanning bed.

So, I’m saving myself from cancer and making myself sexier! What could possibly go wrong? This is my story — my testimony about how I came out the other side of a self-tan addiction. I am a survivor. There was not one day during my junior year I didn’t go to school the color of a Werther’s Original.

That’s actually putting it nicely—the color was more akin to the unsightly orange of a circus peanut. As the months passed, I developed what the girls are now calling “tan blindness.” No brown was too brown. Every Sunday, I would sleep in a thick coat of Coco and Eve, washing it off after nine or ten hours. My tan became impenetrable — an armor that blurred my insecurities and made me feel invisible.

I hated being seen. Being tan made me feel like I was that much closer to looking like everyone else. I wasn’t as skinny, my teeth weren’t as white and my clothes weren’t as expensive — but my skin was just as tan.

It became an obsession. Not tanning was out of the question. It was as important as brushing my teeth and getting dressed.

People noticed, too. My mom and sister made comments about how orange I was, how dark my hands were and how my face never matched my neck. They weren’t trying to be mean — I think the practice and dedication I had to self-tanning was just genuinely comical to them. I didn’t understand how anybody could say I looked even slightly better pale. But everyone in my family did! It annoyed me — they just didn’t get it.

Despite the critiques, I never wavered. I was incapable of being seen in public without a tan. I grew to despise my natural skin. I started bleaching my hair blonder and blonder to match. Brown on brown just didn’t work for me. I had completely changed myself.

One morning, I walked into the school bathroom and looked in the mirror. All of a sudden, it hit me — I looked ridiculous. I did look orange. My hands did look like they had been dragged through mud. I looked like a burnt chicken tender. Everything everybody had ever said to me — all the times my sister had called me an Oompa Loompa — it was all true. I did look ridiculous.

I slept for over nine hours in this tan. I was not going to fix it in the school bathroom five minutes before class. So, channeling Ariana Grande circa 2017, I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and trudged to class.

I don’t know what changed that day. What triggered my reconsideration? Maybe it was just one hour too dark. Maybe just one coat too many. Either way, I saw a glimpse of reality that day. I was no longer blind. Believe it or not, this didn’t stop me from tanning. I held on until the end of the year, but decided at that moment that something needed to change.

I needed to build my confidence from the ground up. I wanted confidence — real, radiating, genuine confidence — not from a bottle.

The National Institute of Health confirms that there is a positive correlation between self-esteem and attractiveness. The more attractive you feel, which for most of us is dictated by society-affirmed beauty standards, the higher your self-esteem. The more you look like Bella Hadid — the more you look like *insert relevant Instagram model here* — the better you feel about what you see in the mirror. And none of us look like that.

At least not without copious amounts of cosmetic surgery, makeup, or, ding, ding, ding — self-tanner. And with the introduction of social media, we are exposed to only the most polished and perfect versions of people. As real as it feels, it’s all a lie. The cycle and standard that controls your life is actually a glam team of seven people and a professional photographer. I didn’t want to feel dependent on anything.

Self-tanning is expensive, time-consuming and ultimately feeds into my insecurities. I was tired of looking in the mirror, seeing my own face and thinking, “ew.” It’s exhausting and unmotivating. So, I decided to go all in on quitting. I put all my chips on white. I spent the summer after my junior year in the sun. I stripped back the protective layer and took myself for what I was. I went cold turkey on tanning. I forced myself into paleness-exposure therapy. And it helped me improve — I started working out, taking walks, eating better. I genuinely did grow into a better version of myself.

My mission in my senior year was to become fully comfortable in my skin. I was in a new school and had an opportunity to show people I’d never met who I was — who I wanted to be. I stopped wearing makeup. I stopped getting up at 5:30 a.m. to curl my hair. Living in your own skin, accepting yourself — that’s what’s priceless. And you know what’s crazy? I actually felt more beautiful.

May 16th, two days before my high school graduation, I picked up the mitt. Not because I hated myself but because it was a special occasion, and I was getting my picture taken. And I did it right — shade medium for four and a half hours. It only accentuated my features — It didn’t cover anything up.

I won’t lie — the amount of compliments people gave me kind of stung. People told me how pretty I looked, and I couldn’t help but think, “no one compliments me nearly as much when I don’t have a tan or makeup on … in fact, they ask if I’m sick. Or if I got enough sleep last night.”

The stigma perpetuated onto women — of all ages — that we have to look the best we possibly can at all times is ridiculous. Throughout this journey, I found myself wondering — why do I need to look so much better? And what even is better, anyway? What is it all for? Wouldn’t it be more fulfilling if I were just accepting of what I saw in the mirror?

I don’t know why there is so much pressure. I’m not a runway model. I’m a student, an employee and an active, contributing member of my community. And if I graduate from college or get invited to the Oscars or something, sure, I’ll give myself the works. But until then, I’m fine, just as I am. Pale, uncooked chicken, me.

Claire Thatcher is a freshman at UT this year studying journalism and media. She can be reached at [email protected].

Columns and letters of The Daily Beacon are the views of the individual and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Beacon or the Beacon’s editorial staff.