Tales from the Trenches: Tan in a Can

My friend Roxanne Rizzo makes an amazing spray tan for face AND body called Bronze Glow. It is the perfect cross between bronzer and self tanner. It lasts a day or two - so longer than makeup - but if you mess up (you've either seen it or done it to yourself, orange palms) it comes off in the shower (but not on your clothes). This one little can make even the palest winter bedraggled skin tone look like it just got back from a week in Miami. CIA ops probably use it to blend in to exotic locales so it doesn't look like they just flew from their desk at the Pentagon. You just hold the can a couple of inches away from your face and body and spritz (post exfoliation, of course). Layer it for a deeper tone or just do one dusting to warm up your pale face. It beats skin cancer.

The spray tan also saved me on the film Please, Give. Written into the script was the idea that one of the main characters was an "overtanner". We all know one. That person for whom you want to stage an intervention between them and their tanning bed/bronzer. Production was worried it would have to pay to send this actress to the salon to get spray tanned every week. As a low budget indie, they were not psyched at that idea, nor was my busy leading lady excited to have to go to the salon every week to literally be stuck in the super tan skin of her character. But my handy can of tan came to the rescue! Every day she worked, we would use a tan foundation on her face (Armani Luminous Silk 5.5 mixed with Makeup Forever in Camel) and then I would spray tan her body. I had to spray about 6 layers to get it past the point of "sexy, warm tan" to "whoa, that chick likes to tan". But because its such a great spray, it probably took about 3-4 minutes to acheive a full-body-super-dark tan. I realized how much my leading lady took the speed and ease of it for granted the day I was spraying her bod down and she told me "Hurry it up, toots!" Hurry up, indeed! To Roxanne's website!