abaya

Emphasis on OUR society, because it's definitely not a universal.

In most developing countries (where brown is the dominant color), being DARK is not a good thing. It shows that you are a manual laborer and spend all day doing back-breaking, poverty-maintaining work for someone else who has more money. You should have heard my Thai family curse me up and down for spending so much time outside tanning, as a kid... they felt I was bringing down their image as upper-class people (most Thai people walk around with umbrellas in the sun). :P I didn't give a shit, but perhaps it would have done me some good to stay out of the sun!

It really makes you wonder why we value the tan look so much. I think it's very much a product of 20th-century media/movies, the "California beach boy" look, etc... just my opinion. Basically, now it's become accepted that if you have enough time/money/skills (e.g surfing, which most blue-collar workers don't do) to work on a tan, then you're upper class. It's basically the same idea as for those in brown countries... if you have enough money to either be white or be tan (given the context), then you must be somethin'...

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran