Vacations are a time to relax and soak up the sun...for most people. For us pale girls, the sun is kind of our enemy. As much as we love to take a break from reality now and then, vacations have a special place in our hearts. On one hand, getting away is great. The warm air, sandy toes, and cool breeze is relaxing on its own. However, the reality of a pale girl on vacation is far different. Sunburn, peeling, itchy skin and around twelve bottles of SPF 150 is more of what our vacations are like. These are some of the hardest parts about traveling to a warm spot as a pale girl:

1. Putting on suntan lotion

For everyone else, putting on suntan lotion takes around five to ten minutes. If you're fair skinned, you must cover every square inch of your body with at least SPF 50. Just when you think you have enough on, you apply more. From the tips of your ears, to the top of your feet, no spot goes unnoticed. This dreaded process takes at least a half hour for us.

2. Brightly colored bathing suits

You know those bright bikinis with neon accents? Those bathing suits are for tan girls. We already look like ghosts in any other color, but these bright shades are guaranteed to wash us out even more. Why do you think the models are tan? It's because if it were a pale girl modeling it, it would just look like a floating bikini.

3. Limited sun exposure

Prime time tanning hours are around lunchtime. It's when the sun is the strongest and when we go into hiding. The only color you're guaranteed to get during these hours, is red.

4. The stronger the UV, the higher the SPF

Whether it's a warm spring afternoon, or a scorching hot summer day, you need your sunscreen. Remember those kids at summer camp that always wore sunscreen, even on a cloudy day? That was us. If the UV index is higher than a 3, you'll find us wearing sunscreen.

5. Freckles

It's a fact of like for pale people. The sun brings out our speckles. These little guys are the only tan looking things on our bodies, but we'll take what we can get. No complaining over here!

6. Being asked if you went on vacation

After you've tried to balance out your sun exposure, re-applied your sunscreen a thousand times, and remained in the shade during the strongest parts of the day, you're lucky if you're not burnt. Most people can come back from a vacation and look moderately tan. For us, it's a miracle if we even get a burn line, not even a tan line. You start to think why you even spend all that money to go away if you still look like a ghost when you get home.

Regardless of where our travels may take us, escaping these issues is no easy task. Maybe it's better to just accept defeat, grab an umbrella, and hide from the sun like Michael Jackson. After all, the spray tans never look natural and the beds will give you cancer. We're just going to have to accept our fair skin because it's not going to change. So save yourself some money, and take pictures with a fake beach background--no one's going to believe you went on vacation anyways. Happy traveling, my pale friends.