I went to school for aesthetics—facials and things. But it was boring; waxing was so tedious. About 19 years ago, I saw a girl doing spray tans at a salon. I always loved tanning. I mean, I’m a Jersey girl. I did the tanning beds and everything. I had a feeling spray tanning was going to get big.
Right away, it was so much fun, meeting clients, seeing them go from pale to tan, and making them feel better. People would feel so good about themselves afterward.
At the beginning, I was scared to touch people. It was really awkward. There are people who are insecure and shy, and I can feel that energy. So I give them a minute to change in private.
Then I make eye contact right away. I want to be sure the client sees that I’m not looking at their body or judging them. I’m painting them and just trying to do a really good job.
It’s funny because I’ll see someone for the first time, and I’m like, “Hi, nice to meet you. Get naked and bend over.” I joke about it. You don’t want white lines under the tushie. I tell them to lift their boobs. And for older people, I tell them to bend their knees so they won’t get white lines. At first, I was so shy to say something, but I realized that it would be better to tell them now, so they don’t have white lines later.
Most of the women I do in New York City don’t mind being fully nude. The Jersey and Long Island people want to keep their underwear on. The gay men will go fully nude, but the straight ones can feel a little weird. Some of them keep their boxers on because the tan lines are realistic. If the guy doesn’t want tan lines, I tell him to put a sock on it, and he’s like, “Great idea!”
Very rarely, someone will want to wear a bra. Sometimes it’s a girl who just had a baby and is breastfeeding, or a woman in her 70s or 80s who says, “No one’s looking at my body, so who cares?”But usually I tell people, “Don’t wear a bra because you’ll get annoyed when you put on a dress and have tan lines.”
When I started, the spray tans definitely turned you orange. I really learned by trial and error. I’d spray myself, my sister, and my family members, and notice that my wrists and my nails looked really bad. So I started cleaning the nails and blending things out with little brushes. I realized the body is not a wall; there are curves: the shoulders, the tush, the boobs.
I started doing the Victoria’s Secret models for their fashion show and contouring their tushies, their abs. It’s like shading. You’d spray a little heavier in that area and blend.
The first celebrity I spray tanned was Jessica Simpson when she was still married to Nick Lachey. I did Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie for The Wolf of Wall Street. We had to go really tan on Leo because the movie was in the 80s, when people used tanning beds and turned so dark. I’m working on a movie now that takes place in the summer, so I spray the actress with the same formula almost every week.
I have about five clients that I spray every week, all year round, winter, snow, it doesn’t matter. One is a gentleman in his 60s who had skin cancer. He used to tan with baby oil and everything. For the past eight years, I’ve seen him every Thursday at 3 p.m.
I can’t talk about a lot of the people I’ve sprayed. One had me sign so many NDAs and papers, it was crazy. Amy Schumer tagged me recently, and that’s almost unheard of. People will mention their makeup artist, their hairstylist, their nail person, but they’ll never mention the spray tanner. They don’t want to say that they have a fake tan. The other spray tanners and I talk about it. It’s like, “Hello! How about us?”
Anna Stankiewicz is a spray tanner who does house calls in the New York City area. Her website is annaspraytanner.com
