Sun tans (are they nearly all fake?)

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This may seem a strange topic but please bear with me. As a kid I used to wear short sleeves, but always preferred long sleeves. Sometime around the age of 9 I stopped wearing short sleeves and wore long sleeves 24/7/365. Nobody ever saw my arms.

Anyway last year I decided being roasting hot at work all the time was stupid as it was making me ill. In the summer work is always mid-to-high 20s DegC (23C-28C). About this time last year I decided to wear short sleeves and did so up till the end of September, then again from the end of April this year.

I've been out and about with short sleeves on in the sunny weather and go a nice red-then-brown on the outside of my arms, but not the inside. That bit stays fairly pale.

Now what is puzzling me is how many people I see with an even colour all the way around their arms, even in winter. It is not pasty white, but then it is not orange or mahogany either. I know people have different "complections/skin tones" but it does seem odd that they rarely appear burnt after being in the sun.

They are not the sort of people you would associate with a fake tan (either bottle or sun bed), but I am starting to wonder if more people than I would ever expect resort to fake tans.

Some (orange) tans are clearly fake, but are the other more subtle ones also fake????

I know, for myself, that I get very real tans. Not fake.

I tan easily as well. I also burn just as easily. I came back home from summer camp around 1997 and was so tan it looked as if I had one of those "spray tans".

The inside of arms won't tan just by staying in a full sun and getting your skin burned (that's why it was red-then-brown for you, it isn't supposed to be that way).
Thats the tan you get by spending a considerate amount of time in the shadow and/or using a protective cream while having a skin that neither gets tanned nor burned easily. When you walk in full sun without a cream and your skin is sun sensitive(either to burn or tan) the tan won't be equal everywhere - it will be way darker where sun directly hits you compared to places that are usually in a shadow.

I don't get tanned easily but I also don't get burned easily. Sun just doesn't do much to my skin(unless I spend a few hours in full sun without any protection for a few days in the row at the start off season without any consideration). Fortunately my tan disappears just as slow as it appears so I am often still a little tanned at the start of new season.

It's getting yellow(not red/pink but yellow/gold) very slowly and at the end of season it might become golden-brown but only if I spend considerate amount of time outside. Asian roots probably. The insides of my arms seem about the same color as my belly which is almost always under a loose or see-through shirt (it gets some contact with sun coming through the material and from the sides). Yet when I compare them with the parts of body that are always hidden under tight clothes I see a difference in color, even now, despite the tanning season having just started.
So yeah - they get tanned, just not as fast as the body parts that get directly hit by the sun.

My dad is the same way but he spends more time outside than I do so his skin is darker than mine (in the arm insides too, although they are not as dark as arm outsides - he doesn't care about sun protection either so the uneven effect is there, it just goes from light golden brown to golden brown). He is darker than me all year long.
My mom has different skin coloration - she gets burned easily and her tan goes from pink/red to dark-peach color. She spends about the same amount of time outside as dad does so her skin is used to sun but there are always darker, redder spots on the outside of her arms while insides get peach color with time(never reach the dark peach her arms do). She is darker than me most of the year(she starts the tanning season early) but I get darker than her around December/January because all her tan disappears by then and my is still with me.

You are probably one of the people with very light skin that gets burned easily - or perhaps you just made it this way by avoiding sun for too long. You should use sun protector or stay in shadow a lot for health reasons but you don't have much chance for the equal tan because you don't have the right type of skin.

Having some relatives with darker skin tones, I find that I remain tanned, for a long time, even in winter.

People taking a sunbath generally pose for the most even tan, partly to minimize burning. There was one trucker in Australia who sat by the open window, getting both morning and evening sun on one side during his N-S return trip for many years. His photo shows a very gnarled old man on one side, and a regular one on the other.