Here in the UK, it’s safe to say we can recognise a bad fake tan. From TOWIE to our own high streets, we’ve seen every shade from “bronzed goddess” to “Trump orange”. But is there an explanation for the 47th President’s apricot hue that doesn’t involve a bottle of Bondi Sands?
Since long before his first presidency, Donald Trump‘s orange face has been the subject of well-spread mockery, with Alec Baldwin even sporting a heavy, dark coating of the colour when he played the President on Saturday Night Live.
With Donald Trump’s inauguration taking place today, his fluorescent traffic-cone coloured face will light up screens worldwide, reminding people to question just why he paints himself a Lorax shade of orange.
And it won’t be the first time this question has come up.
There’s been long-lasting speculation that Trump uses tanning beds and spray tans to achieve his colour, and the lighter colour around his eyes has been put down to a myth that he wears goggles during each of these cosmetic processes.
Trump allegedly fired a staff member for failing to properly set up a tanning bed at the White House, according to former aide Omarosa Manigault in her 2019 book Unhinged.
The Washington Post reported that The President’s former military school classmates have previously claimed that Trump would plug in an ultraviolet tanning bulb to “go to the beach.”
But photos of younger Trump tend to show a much paler version than the one stepping into the Capitol Building this afternoon.
Kriss Blevens has worked as the makeup artist for every President since Jimmy Carter. She guessed that the colour came from self-tanner. “Because I have done Trump’s makeup several times, I can tell you that, at times, his face looked bronzer than the rest of him, and that was before makeup,” she told Fast Company.
The makeup artist also guessed that he used self-tanners to maintain a bronzed look he’d grown used to sporting when he lived in Florida.
Whether it’s fake-tan, spray-tan, or sunbeds, the bigger question at hand is just why Trump has decided to make his most identifiable factor a bright orange face.
Grazia reports that in a 2018 paper, researcher and light-therapy specialist Tania Woloshyn wrote that she believed that Trump’s cosmetic alterations came from a need to improve his appearance and self-confidence. She explained that his skin colour, while a target of mockery, shows an obsession with vanity and a need to meet standards of masculinity.
Perhaps Trump is not unlike the fake-tanned teens we see on the high street. Maybe he changes his appearance due to a want to “improve” his looks and appear more attractive.
And there’s even been speculation that his concentration of orangeness is directly correlated to his stress levels, as we previously reported.
American photo editor Emily Elsie said on Instagram: “I feel like something more psychological is happening. When Trump took office in 2017, he was significantly less orange… but as his term wore on, more bronzer was applied.
“After Trump’s debate with Biden in June 2024, the makeup all but disappears. When Trump was up in the polls, and a victory was all but certain, the bronzer was gone.”
Trump’s team have previously rejected claims that his orangeness comes from spray tans or sun beds. In 2019, an anonymous White House source insisted to The New York Times that his shade was all down to “good genes”.
But as his presidency dawns upon the White House for a second time, we can only expect further speculation, and no solid answers that can explain Trump’s Wotsit-coloured face.
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