By Anabelle De Gale
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
MIAMI - It's the hottest thing not under the sun.
The pasty-pigmented need no longer jones to be as bronze as Malibu Barbie.
The solution? It ain't Coppertone.
You - get this - paint it on.
The spray-down takes all of 30 minutes. Then there is the 12 hours to dry.
"It's just like painting a car. If you do it in the morning, you can't go ahead and touch it in the afternoon," said Marisol Molina, owner of North Miami Beach's VZANZ Waxing Center, one of a handful of South Florida spas that recently began offering the brush-on bronze. "If you are used to coming home from the beach looking like a lobster, this is for you."
After the $30 salon session, newly golden gods and goddesses have but a brief reign: The tan only lasts about five days.
Using a hand-held airbrush, "trained professionals" mist customers down with the rust-tinted liquid. Some go in the buff, others in a bikini or their undies. When it's time to douse the face, the tan-ees hold their breath and raise an arm when they need to come up for air.
The fake bake has come a long way since the days of QT, which looked about as natural as Howard Cosell's hair piece. Celeb clients include Carmen Electra and Paula Abdul, say the folks at Fantasy Tan, manufacturers of the airbrush system.
Also among the fake tan fans: one pale Stephanie Tatem of Sunny Isles Beach.
"This was crazy results. You're like three-weeks-in-the-sun dark. It's not red like you've been fried. The tint is rosy. The next day a lot of it washes off but you still have a lot of color," the 33-year-old raved. "You don't have to work for it, you haven't harmed your skin and the smell is not offensive. If I had the money, I'd do it once a week."
You glow girl, but our own attempt at becoming brown and beautiful in a hurry left us, well, sun-sationally orange. At best a deep pumpkin.
A rarity, we're told. Not everybody winds up looking like a Willy Wonka Oompa Loompa, Molina said. Most people - especially the fair-skinned - will not turn shades of Tang, she vouched. The caramel coat works on all skin types, she said.
The results of your sunless paint job rest upon something far more important, Molina said. The upkeep.
"The success of this tan depends on you," she said. "You must follow directions."
Worry not, your new tan comes with an instruction manual.
Do not wax, shave or exercise - sweating is out of the question - at least until your tan dries. The first 24 hours are crucial. Do not get caught in the rain. Do not shower. Do not scratch and sniff. Resist the itch. Trust us. The grungy film under your finger nails is not attractive.
"The longer you wait to shower, the better," Molina advised.
When you can no longer hold out on bathing, you may notice a brown residue around your tub. Relax. Your tan has not sprung a leak.
"That's just the surface color," said Adele Alden, corporate consultant for Fantasy Tan, which created the tanning system.
Since its 1997 launch, the South Carolina-based company has sold Fantasy Tan to more than 1,000 spas and salons worldwide. Surprise, surprise - the Sunshine State ranks as one of its busiest markets. Molina bought $4,000 worth of equipment and products from the business.
Company executives spent two years researching and testing the system before it hit the market, Alden said. Representatives from Fantasy Tan train vendors to apply the spray. The tanning solution's active ingredient is the chemical DHA, which reacts to the skin's amino acids, producing a darker surface color.
"We live in a world of instant gratification - I want it now; I want it yesterday. With this, you're bronze in 20 minutes. We turned ourselves every shade of the rainbow until we figured out what works and doesn't work."
What they came up with is "not a perfect thing. But it is a healthy alternative to the sun and tanning beds," Alden said.
Agreed, say many dermatologists. "It's a million times better," said Leslie Baumann, director of cosmetic dermatology at the University of Miami Medical School and author of Cosmetic Dermatology: Principal and Practice.
"It's not harmful. Just expensive and orangey," Baumann said.
Thing is, Baumann said, Fantasy Tan is basically "the same stuff you buy in a department store except they are spraying you with it. It's got the same active ingredient as the other self-tanners. It may look more natural because someone else is applying it so you get a more even tan without the streaks."
New or not, some of South Florida's self-professed tan-challenged say they now have it made in the shade.
"I look like I've been in the Caribbean for like a week," Sandra Franco, 28, said. "People wanted to know where I went on vacation."
Franco didn't fess up. Why disappoint them, she reasoned.
"I said I went to the beach, and technically I'm not lying - the salon is in North Miami Beach."
© 2002, The Miami Herald.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
