Ooompas are the orange-skinned dancing and singing employees from the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". Unfortunately, everywhere I look, I see Ooompa doppelgangers. While the young women I see are not exactly singing and dancing everywhere they go, their skin is strangely orange-colored.

Usually, the Ooompa wanna-bes are teenagers or in their early 20's who have yet to realize that the color of the foundation or spray-on tanning lotion that they apply to their skin actually makes a difference. Often, their natural beauty is covered up with thick, glommy orange foundation, which is probably not their intent.

Most of us are taught early on to look for the correct foundation for our skin type, but aren't necessarily taught how to select the appropriate foundation color. As a general rule of thumb, no one should be wearing orange-toned anything on their skin, and if you are fair-complexioned, you have to take extra care when choosing the colors for your foundations and self-tanners. According to this site, yellow-based foundation colors look best on most skin colors, while pink-based foundation colors look best on those with pale complexions. The idea is to test and match the skin color in the store on your jaw-line. I think that the key point that most young people miss is that foundation should actually match your skin tone by blending in. 

You might think that darkening your skin with foundation greatly enhances your beauty, but chances are, it will just call attention to the fact that you are either wearing too much make-up or that you failed to match your skin tone. If you wear foundation, the color you choose for your skin is important.

This article gives information about the right way to use self-tanning products. Of course, going the professional route is always the best option, but given the hard facts of this economy, that might not always be possible. The most important recommendation for self-tanning is attempting to go just one shade darker than your own skin tone. Again, the reason for this is that it won't look natural. We don't need any more Ooompa Look-a-Likes out and about than their already are. The truth is that young skin, with the exception of pimples, is much more forgiving than older skin, so those in their 20's probably don't need as much make-up to begin with.