If I was to guess, I would have said the late 1970s/early 1980s were the first time we were introduced to the idea of fake tanning. I seem to recall one of our neighbours owning a sunlamp that she used to tan her (very leathery-looking) skin; she was so brown that she looked like she had been spray painted in mission brown – one of the many awful hues disturbingly popular at the time. From there of course was Le Tan Coconut Oil which was particularly effective in darkening your complexion as well as speeding up your risk of skin cancer, which was hardly spoken of back then.

Historically, at the beginning of the 20th century, people whose skin was t