Just Call Me Snooki

My first experience with an airbrush spray tan was two years ago when I purchased a Groupon for a tanning package at a salon near my work in Westwood. After my first appointment, I didn’t really think anything was particularly odd until I spoke with my friends who are also fans of the spray tan. The salon that I went to for my first airbrush tan went out of business about a month after I used up my tanning package which is a perfect preface to my story…

 

I showed up on time for my tan, showered and exfoliated and wearing the recommended loose black clothes and flip flops. I may have been an airbrush tan virgin but I was ready to get it over with and excited for the outcome. It seemed as though I waited for almost half an hour (thank God I brought a book) but just figured they were busy back there. When the lady came out to let me know that it was my turn, I got up and followed her to the back room. She was about fifty years old but wanted to be twenty and by the looks of her plastic surgery, teenage clothes and bleach blonde hair, she was giving it her best effort. She told me to take off all of my clothes except for the disposable thong underwear she gave me and paper flip flops that stick to the bottom of your feet. She left the room to fill up the airbrush gun thingy and when she came back I was naked and freezing in front of a stranger.

 

As she began to apply the first layer, she also began to tell me her life story. And then she kept talking and spraying and layering and talking. At one point she left to smoke a cigarette while I was ‘drying.’ She came back and assisted me with the drying portion of the tan with the hose from the airbrush machine thingy. After she helped me dry the tan, I swear to God she took her lunch break and told me to wait and she would be back to apply the last layer. I honestly didn’t know that there was anything wrong with this thinking, she knows what she is doing and her skin looks nice and tan (she actually looked like Magda from There’s Something About Mary now that I think about it). When she came back, she applied the very final coat of bronze-ness, then I had to dry off again for about ten minutes. Once she was finished, I looked in the mirror and didn’t see myself but an African American lady staring back at me. Well, I wasn’t that dark but I was definitely a dead ringer for a cast member on The Jersey Shore. When I walked outside it was dark (my appointment was at 4:30pm) and I felt like I had been there for an hour. I looked down at my watch and realized that I was there for an hour and a half. I did end up finishing the last few tans on the Groupon package but I made sure I didn’t let ‘Magda’ spray me and told the girl that I only wanted one layer.