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Belle Christina On Ditching Fake Tan And Finding Her Natural Glow
Beauty25 August 2026
AuthorAniesha Chidwick
PhotosBelle Christina
From fake tan to natural skin? Learning how to embrace my own skin tone and learning how to ditch the societal expectations given to me.
A
fter years of feeling insecure without a tan, Belle found herself fake tanning at 3am just to feel confident. But one unexpected comment made her question why she was so desperate to look like everyone else — and ultimately changed the way she saw natural beauty forever.
Not feeling your best without a tan is something I’m sure many of you can relate to, and Belle wants to make it known that this is not okay. We should be able to feel beautiful and confident in our own skin without relying on a bottle of tanner.
How it started
As a young girl, Embracing pale skin was something Belle struggled with long before it became her biggest insecurity and she found herself in a vicious circle of avoiding comments. If you’re a fair beauty, you may be able to relate to being called “Casper The Ghost” or even hearing the concerned, “Are you okay? You look pasty?”, just because you didn’t spend half an hour dowsing yourself in green-toned foam the night before.
This was something Belle tirelessly tried to escape in PE class, on family holidays, and when she was bar hopping with friends at university. She even found herself tanning at 3am, praying that it would develop fast enough.
However, there was one comment that she couldn’t avoid.
When Belle’s physio said to her, “Everybody your age looks the same. They all come in wearing orange paint,” she “internally screamed” and couldn’t help but question, why do we all want to look the same? What he said stuck with her, and she was forced to look at things differently. She realised that we see standing out as a negative, but perhaps it can actually be a good thing.
For the first time, Belle started to question whether the problem was really being pale, or whether it was the belief that being pale was something she needed to fix.
She knew from this point that she wanted to change.
The Cause / Effect
Whilst Belle went through her tough yet inspirational tan withdrawal, she spent a lot of time focusing on mindset and where the toxic cycle of tanning had actually begun for her.
She found the issue to be that, all over the world, our anchor of beauty and confidence is coming from external environments like social media and the beauty standards around us.
She realised this when she posted her first tanned-to-natural transition on social media, and so many people related to being glued to something for their confidence, whether it be tan, bleach, hair extensions or sunbeds.
It made Belle realise that this wasn’t really about tan. It was about the feeling that we need to change something about ourselves before we can feel confident.
Growing up on social media, Belle was inspired by Instagram figures like Kylie Jenner and Ariana Grande. She loves them both, but they look nothing like her.
This is the case for many young individuals who don’t see their own features represented online. When the people we constantly see being held up as beautiful don’t look like us, it can be easy to believe that we need to change ourselves to fit the standard.
Why do we do it?
Because of this, Belle agrees that we’re dealing with a deeper psychological conditioning issue, and a stop needs to be put to all of it with the correct representation to change people’s mindsets. Not just regarding tan and sunbeds, but also the many people who alter their appearance, including bleaching their skin, to fit a standard that they have been taught is beautiful.
You’re probably asking how Belle got away from tan and washed it down the drain. The answer is, it wasn’t easy for her.
Belle explains it as being a withdrawal at first, and the hardest part was overcoming her old beliefs. She bit the bullet, pushed past the stigma around being deemed ‘pale’, and started to see it as a compliment. This, alongside finding confidence within herself and changing her mindset, made her realise that the desperation to be tanned before was a delusion. She didn’t even enjoy the routine of fake tanning. That’s what made the realisation even bigger. She had spent so much time believing that being tanned was necessary for her confidence, whilst not even enjoying what she was doing.
Belle has now reached a point where she feels happier in her natural skin than she ever did covered in tan. So much so that she will never accept a fake tan brand deal, no matter how many times they reach out to her.
Once Belle started loving her skin, everyone else did too. She was flooded with compliments and wants everyone to know that “changing your mindset changes your reality.”
For Belle, the physical change didn’t come first. The internal change did.
Belle and her community
After the reactions that she received on her transition video, Belle was sure that she needed to put her own foot forward, help others, and build the community that she never had.
Her aim is to create permanent confidence for people all over the world and dispose of the kind that is harmful, or washes off every week. She’s proving to be successful with her ‘10 Day Challenge To Love Your Skin’, and the comments that she receives in the street.
Belle says, “The most rewarding thing is when people stop me in the street and say, ‘I’m not wearing fake tan today because of you.’”
She can see that it’s becoming a permanent switch in people’s minds rather than a quick trial, which is a major step in a world programmed by superficial standards, and ultimately it’s her goal. Because for Belle, it isn’t about convincing people to stop wearing fake tan. It’s about making sure they know they don’t need it. Who were we when we didn’t care, and when it wasn’t a thought in our minds? Belle is trying her best to take her audience back to that time.
From Belle to you
It’s easier said than done to escape from the depths of insecurity, but if you unpack where it came from, and realise that it in fact isn’t you, it’s conditioning, then you’re on the right track. Belle wants you to know that you are the ingredient you need to change, and you are the beauty standard. You don’t need to change your skin to become beautiful. You don’t need to fit the standard to be confident. And you don’t need something that washes off every week to feel good about yourself.
Once you ditch those toxic habits and start loving your natural skin, other people will too.
So be brave, and open your mind.
Who were you before you were taught that you needed to change?
