Maybe somebody should let Julie Ruvolo know about CoolTan tan through Swimwear.

Although I definitely buy the whole UV ray / skin cancer connection, I say with only some shame that I am a tanner for life.

Tanning is here to stay. People are in the sun, they get tan. And if you’re wearing clothes in the sun, you’re going to get tan lines. So until the entire sunny part of the world is using sunscreen on a regular basis and non-UV fake-tanning for their kicks (and I do think things like small pox vaccines and birth control are higher priorities), then we’re going to have tans, and we’re going to have tan lines. Unless everyone goes naked, which (sorry, Columbae) I am sincerely happy will never happen.

So, tan lines. Pesky for some, inevitable for certain athletes, highly desirable for still other people.

Pesky for most Californians. California chic is to untie your bikini top while you’re tanning. Guys, on the other hand, are a lost cause. Board shorts mean white thighs, for surfers and pseudo-surfers alike.

Inevitable for others. Farmers, for example, get farmer’s tans.

But you will never see a worse farmer’s tan than you do on cyclists. Those guys have the whitest upper arms on the entire planet, plus they have spiky arms and legs. You know, shaving their limbs is supposed to make them more aerodynamic and faster or whatever, but since guys don’t know how to shave or even braid hair, they wind up all spiky.

Perhaps equally as famous as the cyclist’s tan, but slightly more acceptable, is the swimmer’s tan. Specifically, the women’s Speedo back tan. It’s such a classic, it’s almost acceptable.

But it’s not. Really.

Guys don’t have this problem when they swim. They wear Speedos, and if you’re half of the Stanford men’s water polo team, they let their butt cracks hang out while they’re at it. Little Kim tried to make the butt crack sexy-punky several seasons ago and it just doesn’t work.

If you want to see water polo players with nice tans, the best view on the entire campus is the view from my window. See, all water sports guys live in KA, and my room has full view of the KA basketball court. These guys are amphibians playing basketball, which is funny, and they are all very well tanned. With chlorinated hair. It’s very nice. Too bad I am not a single underclassman.

The same room on the floor above me has a similar view, but my upstairs neighbors just have sex all the time, so the opportunity goes under-appreciated on the second floor as well.

Not everyone is anti-tan lines. The first time I stripped down to my Brazilian bikini in Ipanema, and untied my straps to avoid that awful strap tan, my friends looked at me in bewilderment, said that tan lines are in, and told me to buy a smaller thong while I was at it.

Imagine a hot Brazilian girl. She’s a beautiful tan brown, with big dangling earrings and a hot body. The strap tan reveals her real color, which in many cases is so drastic that the tan lines can actually be mistaken for a white tank top.

My second lesson at Ipanema beach, besides the whole strap-tan fad, involved acid burn.

You heard me correctly.

In a daft attempt to highlight my hair with lime juice, á la California blonde, I wound up in the emergency room with the skin on my face bubbling up. Apparently mixing citric acid with intense sunlight burns your skin off.

While I was cavorting around Costa Rica’s volcanoes, jungles and beaches last week with my boyfriend, I saw burn victims that put my little lime mishap to shame. I’m talking about a few very white, freckled Texan tourists who did not understand the meaning of staying indoors. The result was catastrophic: layers of hardened, stretched pink scar tissue, with sunken, black scabs scattered about. It was absolutely horrific. And they were so nonchalant about it.

Which is worse, the severe burning or the “I just got back from the tropics and had some poor woman braid my hair in rows! It’s so authentic!” phenomenon?

At least if Texas had seceded, we would be rid of part of the problem. For the rest of us, we’re going to tan, burn and peel, we’re going to get tan lines, and swimmer’s back and cyclist’s tan will continue on in hopeless, clueless perpetuity. But I am not going to lie and tell you it doesn’t look bad.

Julie is a well-tanned senior. E-mail her julieolo@stanford.edu for tanning tips.