The pale, pasty look that's all the rage these days has never done anything for me, but then, people who take pigmentation to the other extreme — getting so much solar radiation that their skin turns the color and texture of a catcher's mitt — is just plain repulsive. As with everything, there's a point of diminishing returns, when you cross the line between fashionable accentuation and become a walking freak-show. But then, if people were at all capable of perceiving that barrier, I suppose society would be a lot less interesting.

... and what would Rikki Lake do for a living?

Contemporary "sun worshippers" would probably argue that it's a natural thing, that before the Industrial Era, humankind spent almost all of the time outdoors, and the vast majority of people looked much like Queen Imhotep, here. The counterpoint, of course, is that malignant melanoma is a natural thing, too, and that before the Industrial Era, the vast majority of people died before they reached the age of 40. Besides which, people with baggy flesh covered with black mole-like lesions weren't often seen hanging about the town square, but were exiled to leper colonies.

Which were probably a lot like California.

What's most disturbing is that, if the late 1980's regurgitated the 60's and the late 90's the 70's, then society will start getting nostalgic for the Reagan era in few more years. People will start wearing white jeans and industrial-strength hair gel again, and tanning salons will start popping up in strip malls across the country. The nightclubs will be filled with leather-faced people with blue hair, talking about Duran Duran and drinking wine coolers.

What better incentive for culture to move forward ...
... instead of going back to where it puked in the past?