Tan France: Queer Eye star 'bleached skin as a child'
- Published
Queer Eye star Tan France says he bleached his skin as a child so he could be seen as "more attractive".
"When I was five, I remember thinking, 'God, I'd give anything to be white," he writes in his new book Naturally Tan.
The 36-year-old, who grew up in Doncaster and is of Pakistani heritage, says that he "worried constantly" that "bad things would happen" to him because of his skin.
He says he now knows it is "beautiful".
Tan is Queer Eye's fashion expert and, like his Queer Eye friends, spends the majority of his time each episode sharing messages of self-love and body positivity with the show's guests - although admittedly with more tough love than the rest of the crew.
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But as a child Tan says he wasn't as confident in his own skin as he is now.
"The importance of being pale is very bizarre. The people around me certainly didn't intend to pass on this belief, but I was aware of it and affected by it just the same," he writes.
"I had been so conditioned to think that if you were white, you were automatically more attractive."
That's why as a 10-year-old he stole his cousin's bleaching cream.
The "Fab Five" - (l-r) Jonathan Van Ness, Bobby Berk, Tan France, Antoni Porowski and Karamo Brown
"I haven't had the balls to tell her I took it, because, since then, I've been ashamed of the fact that I succumbed to the pressure.
"I kept the dirty little secret to myself. I'd only use it at night, before bed, when no-one else was going to catch me," he says, adding how painful the cream was to use.
Queer Eye fans will know how importantly Tan takes self-love, so won't be surprised to hear how differently he feels towards his skin now.
"If you ask me what my favourite thing about my appearance is, I'll say my skin," he says.
"As a ten-year-old, I could never have imagined that you could find my skin colour beautiful, and I'm willing to bet most non-white people have thought the same thing."
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