1:52pm Tuesday 4th March 2008
By Emma Clayton
I never thought I'd be inspired by a member of Girls Aloud, but it seems to have happened.
No, I don't mean Cheryl and her carefully-styled heartbreak. Or Bradford's own Kimberley Walsh and her boyfriends-come-and-go-but-best-mates-stick-together chumminess.
It's the surly ginger one, Nicola Roberts, I've developed a begrudging respect for.
The three girls recently returned from a holiday in Thailand where they were snapped by paparazzi looking as perfect as celebrities generally do when they're fully aware of long lens cameras
capturing their every move on a beach. Only there was something different about these photos.
While Chezza and Kimberley were soaking up the sun, turning a deeper shade of mahogany than usual, Nicola was looking decidedly pasty-faced.
And when the girls were snapped at the airport, (with Cheryl hiding her heartbreak behind the obligatory sunglasses), Nicola stuck out like a slab of Cheshire cheese. She had clearly decided it was
better to avoid the sun than turn a painful shade of lobster pink. Good for her.
I took a dislike to Nicola from when she was a stroppy-looking contestant on Popstars: The Rivals, but in a world where most female celebrities are spray-tanned to within an inch of their lives, she
stands out as having a mind of her own. Next to her sun-kissed bandmates Nicola almost looked pale and interesting. As pale and interesting as an over-styled C-list pop star from Runcorn can
look.
Maybe the pale and interesting look will catch on. As someone who has suffered sunburn, blisters, heat rashes and weeping sores in an attempt to get a suntan, I hope so. As a child I'd go on holiday
with my family and they'd all return with suntans, whereas I'd still look as white as I did when we'd set off. "You're an English rose," my dad would tell me. "I don't want to be an English rose,"
I'd wail. "I want a tan."
After suffering a particularly nasty case of sunburn in Portugal last year, I decided enough was enough. On the last day of my hols I stupidly went hell for leather (literally, as it turned out,
judging by the state of my skin) and braved the devious breeze that whips off the sea onto the beach. A breeze that felt quite refreshing as I squirted out a very small amount of daringly low-factor
suncream. By the evening my face was burnt to a crisp, sore and weeping. I returned home with a face that had turned into a red mask, prompting people on the 'plane to visibly wince. I got double
takes in the street, and not in a good way.
I felt like that boy in the Cher film, Mask, or someone on a TV freak show documentary. I was Red Leather Face. It took a good two weeks and a ton of moisturiser for my face to settle into something
resembling normality.
So, never again. And I refuse to get into the whole spray tan thing, mainly because it all looks so messy. No, I'm taking the Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and, dare I say it, Nicola Roberts route
and opting for the porcelain-skinned look.
Or at least I was, until I saw Tilda Swinton at the Oscars, looking like Elizabeth I's plainer sister. Maybe spray tan isn't such a bad idea after all…
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