#23 The tan that mis-sold a 'healthy' glow

Unpacking the century-old allure of bronzed summer skin, and why we urgently need to change tone with sun protection...

There aren’t many discontinued beauty products that linger in my mind like Johnson’s ‘Holiday Skin’. Weird, I know—but the tinted body lotion marked my first teenage foray into faking a hallowed summer glow in my Lincolnshire hometown, where one was realistically never going to evolve naturally. The bright yellow bottle sold the enticing promise, for around a fiver, of enhancing my alabaster limbs with a ‘beautiful, even tan’ come bare-legged weather. Let’s just say the results had streaks of the Wotsits about them.