Thanks to perpetually warm, sunny weather, students can’t help but pick up a little color walking to and from class.
While jealous friends at universities across the country bundle up in heavy jackets, hats and mittens and slip on fur-lined boots to brace the elements, UM students don shades, flip-flops and colorful bathing suits.
And even when students head home to cold places for winter or spring break, their skin always seem to sparkle like the Florida sunshine while everybody else just looks pale. In fact, ‘Canes don’t even know what it means to look pale anymore. The skin tone at which students consider themselves pasty white is the same skin tone at which those in the northeast consider themselves golden.
But it’s not all accidental: some people make layout out their job (‘Jersey Shore” gym-tan-laundry anyone?). It’s often impossible to find a vacant lounge chair at the UC pool, for tanning has become a social scene at The U with sexy students mingling both in and out of the water.
Bikini-clad girls slather on tanning oil and boys, sporting vibrantly colored board shorts, take in the sights. Girls wear bandeau tips or artfully tuck in their halter straps to avoid tan lines, of course.
For the super-dedicated, there is no need for a pool or a beach, the IM fields, on a cold breezy day just before Thanksgiving, are often packed with underclassmen trying to live up to the bronzed tradition.
The phenomenon that is the “perma-glow” is all the more reason for skimpy wardrobes and white clothes to emphasize the “glowiness”, constant outdoor parties, and sexy weekend romps in South Beach.
But more importantly, it is all the more reason to answer with pride — when asked, “Where’d you get that tan?” — the University of Miami. No student body glows like ours.
words_ally day and olivia bernardo. photo_abigail garner. design_christopher hardgrove