I’ll be honest. While I love self-tanner and never go without a bottle or two in my bathroom cabinet, I don’t use it religiously. In fact, I’ll only use it when I have a big event in the near future or my skin looks really dull. The latter is what drove me to use it most recently. You see, I used to live in L.A. and Austin—two warm-weather cities where I stayed sun-kissed all year round. Last year, though, I moved back to my hometown in the Midwest. That means, for the first time in forever, I spent an entire winter in the cold, gloomy snow.

Unsurprisingly, after four months of little to no sunlight, my skin started looking pretty lackluster. One morning, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and was genuinely shocked that my skin looked the way it did. I knew it was time to bring out the self-tanner. But not just any self-tanner. I’d been seeing a specific brand all over Instagram and TikTok. The before-and-after pictures were so good that I felt compelled to try it. So I did, and wow. It gave me a post-vacation glow in just a couple of hours.