Rachel Dolezal, the white former president of the Spokane NAACP, has become the focus of media attention with her masquerade for many years as an African American.
Those with a classical education are aware of the poetic odes of Victorian writers to the alluring fair skin of their beloved. Aware of this attraction, women kept to the shade in summer or sought the protection of parasols.
But there came a time when all that changed. Women would remove as much clothing as they dared in order to lie in the sun. They would then apply lotions and oils to produce the desired shade, and compliments would then be about the quality of the sun tan.
Excessive exposure to the sun caused premature aging of the skin and in worst cases, the deadly melanoma cancer. Nonetheless, commercial tanning salons sprang up across the country to enable women to tan in winter.
What caused the shift from the beauty of the fair maiden as extolled by countless smitten lovers? Who first perceived fair skin as a pallor to be burnished by the sun? And now women of European origin find it necessary to risk their lives to attain a color not their own.
Those questions about how cosmetic tastes transmuted from ivory to bronze cannot be so easily answered. How then will there be a satisfactory explanation of the decision by Dolezal to abdicate her European heritage to assume life as an African American?
