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SHADES OF BEAUTY

When Japanese farm ladies work outside they wear traditional big-brimmed sunbonnets with neck covers, and special forearm and wrist covers so that they can work all day in the sun and still look as pale as if they never spend any time outdoors (not to mention the tacit ancient awareness-wisdom as to the dangers of long-term exposure to sunlight). They live linked to the old tradition that a woman's beauty is at its best when pale and hidden away indoors but for rare showings. The young city office ladies, in contrast, who put their beauty on display every day on the train and in the office, go to tanning salons (where ancient awareness-wisdom is pretty much a non-starter), where they uncover themselves and lie in the pseudosun so that after a few sessions they're dark enough to look as though they never any spend time indoors. Countrypale women and citytan women. There must be a bunch of morals here somewhere, both light and dark.