Toasted or Not?

As you know, I’m always looking to get new ideas for posts, and someone sent me a link to an article by msnbc. It’s about tanning.

“Prior to the 20th century women were fanatical about avoiding exposure to the sun. Umbrellas and parasols went everywhere with any woman who could afford them. The French fashion designer Coco Chanel changed all that.

Back in the 1920s, Coco, looking to create a new “healthy” look to promote summer wear, popularized tanned skin. Women began sunbathing and those with a tan were seen in high society as beautiful. Voila! Skin damage as fashion accessory. You’ve gotta love an industry that has made anorexia and damaged skin cool.”

Nice, huh? My views are this:  Yes, tan does look better, but probably because it’s ingrained into my mind and taste by societal pressures since I was tiny. But, if someone is so vain as to tan their skin to a dark leather, why aren’t they thinking about how they’re going to look in 40 years? Have they not seen a woman in her 50’s or 60’s who’s tanned her whole life? NOT pretty. At all. Ever. Which is why I’m glad there’s spray-on tans and self-tanning lotion! I can have the best of both worlds.

And that’s to say nothing of melanoma; half of all cancers in the US are skin cancers! If people would wise up and realize they’re frying themselves on purpose, cancer would decrease by 50%!!

I saw a project done once on tv about tanning. A middle school-aged girl got 2 hot dogs and placed each under a tanning light bulb. She smothered one with sunscreen and left the other plain. Obviously she wasn’t planning on eating them. After some time (I wish I could remember how long), the hot dog with the sunscreen looked the same. The plain dog was shriveled, dark, and wrinkled. Precisely how we look in the same circumstances. The point was that this is what happens to our skin when over-exposed to tanning beds and the sun.

Here’s the link to the article if you’re interested in reading the whole thing:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25378496/