The overzealous war on indoor tanning
Here come the health police. First they came for the cigarettes. Then they came for the sodas. Now it’s the tanning salons.
[…] A bill in Congress would stiffen health warnings on tanning machines. The American Medical Association is asking lawmakers to put these machines off-limits to anyone under 18, and the American Academy of Dermatology wants to outlaw them altogether.
About 30 million Americans use tanning salons. At least one of every four teenage girls, and nearly one of every two girls aged 18 or 19, has tanned indoors at least three times. Why? According to this month’s Archives of Dermatology, “[ultraviolet] radiation, a classified carcinogen, is commonly and specifically marketed to adolescents through high school newspaper advertising” by salons. Why do kids keep coming back? A study in the current Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology suggests “frequent tanning is driven by an opioid-dependent mechanism.” In other words, it’s a physical addiction. It even has a street name: tanorexia. Harmful, addictive, marketed to kids—that’s the three-count indictment that brought down tobacco and soft drinks.
Like the tobacco companies, the salons live in a bubble of denial that cries out for oversight. Last year, in a survey by Consumer Reports, one of every three salons denied that tanning could cause skin cancer or would age a client’s skin. Their lobbying arm, the Indoor Tanning Association, asserts that “your body is designed to repair any damage to the skin caused by ultraviolet light exposure”—as though nobody ever died of melanoma—and hilariously suggests that exposing adolescents to the summer sun for two or three more hours per day would eliminate most cases of multiple sclerosis.
Still, there’s something misguided about the crusade against tanning salons. Actually, two things: liberal bias against industry, and conservative bias against sensuality.
And from that unique source on all things Russian, Pravda, here’s a related story about tanning and breasts.
If the sun goes supernova tomorrow, George Hamilton will run outside and say, “Finally, I don’t need that damn tanning bed!”
I had no idea there was a physically-addictive component to the tanning mechanism, though — Kids, just say “No” to the opioid high of a deep, dark tan. It’s reassuring to see that nothing is more healthy than the pasty white look I’ve spent so many years cultivating.
When are we as a nation going to wise up and realize that taking the warning labels off of everything will do tremendous good?
I’m not saying that the government needs to be involved, but tanning is certainly addicting to some people. I know several formerly beautiful women who now have disgusting leathery skin because of their tanning obsessions.
To continue doing something that negatively and permanently alters your appearance has to have some sort of biological component to it.
“I know several formerly beautiful women who now have disgusting leathery skin because of their tanning obsessions.”–SN
SN, I saw a severe case of this when I was in Florida in the late ’70s: a girl who would have been very pretty but for the fact that her chest was as leathery as a lizard. And she was still trying to get a darker tan. She was only college age then; I can only imagine what her skin is like now.
Chicks like the tanning beds ’cause they can get an all over tan. I’ve asked, and also offered to help in any way I can. Rubbing in the suntan oil?