why does tan(on skin) on hairy parts of the body like the legs not go away after a year but on not hairy parts like the hand and face it goes away after 1month?

Question

Sorry for my english

In: Biology

Answer 1

It has to do with your skin replacing itself. Your hands and face are washed and exposed much more than your arms and legs. So all that tanned skin gets shed off much faster than it does on other parts of your body. The hair thing is just coincidence.

Answer 2

The hair is just a coincidence. A tan is what happens when UV in sunlight hits our skin. It damages it a little bit (or a lot in the case of a sunburn) and your skin produces a chemical called melanin in response to try and protect itself. That increase in melanin darkens your skin and is a tan. But as new skin cells are made and the old ones slough off the new skin cells haven’t been exposed to UV and so only have your normal amount of melanin in them and your skin looks lighter again. So places like your hands and face where your body replaces your skin cells very quickly lose their tan very quickly, and places where your body doesn’t make new skin as fast like your shoulders keeps the tan for longer. So it’s about how fast your body replaces skin cells not about body hair.