A deep, rich sun tan was accepted far and wide as a sign that you had money, and lots of it. After all, you were only going to get a tan like that if you could afford to take lots of time off to go somewhere exotic and expensive for a lengthy period of time because a week on the beach after a relatively short haul flight wasn’t going to cut it.
And as for sunbeds and the subsequent tanning booth revolution, well, what were they?