inb4 someone asks what I mean by healthy, I mean not twig-like as how Western culture perceives beauty in this day and age. Fuck you Industrial Revolution and fuck you Great Depression for making society look down on the curvy, the big-boned, the voluptuous and the stocky! I can't even find pants in my size outside of the Big and Tall section at Marshalls because of you two assholes!
You realize that during times of hardship like the great depression that the idea of beauty moves closer towards that "curvaceous" idea right? It's the fact that we aren't in the great depression that we look at skinny as being more beautiful (and in fact if you look at media you will notice that during this most recent depression there was actually an increase in the average size/weight of movie stars and other "beautiful" figures).
People want what they don't have. In the land of the constantly setting sun people prize tans, in the land of the rising sun people apply make up that pales their skin.
Funny eh?
Not really, pale skin has been a sign of beauty in both European and Japanese culture for 100's of years. Japan's climate is mostly temperate, not tropical.
The average Japanese is a lot fairer in skin than plenty of "Europeans" (since Japan is at a fairly northern latitude). Not everyone in Europe is a Nord, and not everyone in Asia has a complexion like Filipinos or Malaysians.
One interesting aspect is that in many places where light skin is a sought-after thing, a common thing is that a deep tan indicates that you work outdoors - e.g. you're a peasant or a labourer, rather than an office worker, so it's not just vanity, it's women (or men) not wanting to be stereotyped as a "poor person".
A tan being popular may be involved in the shift to a more affluent life-style, along with the "beach culture", wilderness adventure, and sports. A tan now indicates a life of leisure, not of hard labour.