This, and other burning questions, will terrorize you for nights on end after you read this article on the art of telegenic spray-tan sculpting.

In a deeply troubling, highly humorous article in The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick reveals that airbrush spray tan technicians have the most suddenly sought-after—and intensely surreal—jobs in Hollywood:

For years television makeup artists used full-body foundation to help make actors glow on the small screen. High-definition TV and the explosion of dance shows made it even more important to hide every flaw. The temporary foundation caked up, rubbed off on costumes and doesn't work on physically demanding and sweaty dance programs.

The concept is a bit like those trompe l'oeil t-shirts of sexy bikini ladies that fat people wear to pretend they are hot. Except instead of a t-shirt, it's stinky chemicals that force your skin to produce unnatural quantities of melanin, so as to allow television producers to literally paint over the features they don't like, so that you may be both puppet and puppeteer to the tawnier, tonier version of you.

Now here is a sentence that will give you nightmares:

"They said if I wanted to open my shirt for the finale, they could paint a six pack on me," Mr. DeLay said, from his cellphone as he drove an RV from Sugar Land, Texas, to Los Angeles for the [Dancing With the Stars] finale, at which eliminated contestants will appear one last time.

This one will give you nightmares, too, but for different reasons:

On Dancing With the Stars, in season six in 2008, Miami Dolphins linebacker Jason Taylor, who is African-American, had to get a spray tan because his Polish dance partner, Edyta Sliwinska, had over-tanned and was darker than Mr. Taylor, says Mr. Green, the producer. A spokesman for Mr. Taylor says his client didn't get spray-tanned.

[WSJ]