Addictive tanning belies unseen truth of 'natural' beauty

[Ezliving_Jim]

Addictive tanning belies unseen truth of 'natural' beauty

American ideals of beauty have shifted from embracing wholesome, inherent features to skewed, unnatural forms.

Jean Guerrero

Posted: 2/27/07

Scientists may have finally discovered a cure for tanorexia.

Oncologist David Fisher and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School realized that the compound forskolin may be used in a cream to produce melanin in the skin for a truly natural-looking tan, according to the December 2006 issue of Popular Science.

The usual alternatives to tanning booths and outdoor tanning never seem to suffice in a tanorexic's search for a healthy tan. These tanning creams, foams and sprays stain the skin a sickly orange, despite their supposed "golden" finish; however, because melanin is naturally produced in the skin as a defensive reaction against harmful untraviolet rays and causes tanning, forskolin could produce an attractive, natural tan.

Tanorexia has become increasingly common, consistent with contemporary ideals concerning beauty. Ironically, people used to think that tanned skin was really quite ugly. Darker skin tones were exclusively those of the working and lower classes - a brand, if you will, of their hard circumstances laboring outdoors. Back then, being pale was ideal.

Quite apparently, our views have shifted dramatically. It almost seems as though we have decided that the unhealthier a person is, the better.

Think about it: Society went from idealizing a healthily plump and fair-skinned individual to preferring a really thin and tanned woman. Even the way we perceive hair as beautiful has moved us in a destructive direction. Many people are bleaching their hair so that most of the hair we idealize is about to fall out of the person's head.

The corset used to be the absolute worst. To keep up with the cultural dictations about beauty, women would strap themselves in corsets - maybe breaking a rib or two. Now we're in an entirely different playing field. Women are cutting themselves open, getting bags stuffed into their bodies and having their bodily fluids suctioned out of them.

The unseen truth of the matter is that there isn't just one way of being. Take Scarlett Johansson. She's really quite pale, and her ribs aren't poking out from beneath her tank top. Nonetheless, she's beautiful.

There are two reasons so many young people are falling under tanning's spell and conforming to that particular ideal without considering the above claim. As a recovered tanorexic, I can tell you that the appeal in tanning stems from its predictable outcome. If you go in for a haircut, you never really know how it's going to turn out. It's unnerving, and occasionally quite depressing in the end.

But with tanning, you can never go wrong. (That is, until you discover you have melanoma.) It's always going to be the same: You go into the tanning bed, you lie there for a set amount of time and voilà, you emerge with darker skin. It's a lot about having control over your appearance.

The second reason is more frightening: According to an April 2006 issue of The New York Times, scientists at Wake Forest University discovered that tanning may be addictive.

Their studies revealed that the ultraviolet rays released in tanning beds cause the release of endorphins, which results in a high, not unlike that experienced from drugs.

Ideals aside, the facts are blatantly clear: Tanning is unhealthy, both physically and psychologically. When the options are weighed, is excessive tanning really worth the premature aging and the potential for skin cancer? Is being beautiful now worth being wrinkly earlier than everybody else?

Thankfully, there are solutions to both sides of the addiction.

First of all, there's another way to have control over your appearance: applying sunscreen. Think pretty hats, sunglasses and SPF moisturizer. That way, you'll be controlling the fact that you won't be trying to cover up your wrinkles or battling cancer a decade from now. The controlled outcome of tanning can be replaced with maintaining a healthy, creamy shade to your skin.

There is also an alternative to the endorphin release from tanning: chocolate.

For those of you who still aren't convinced, news about the forskolin compound has yet to come. The compound has not yet been tested on humans, but there's still hope for struggling tanorexics: If its magic works as effectively on pale humans as it does on pale rodents, we just may be able to say goodbye to orange skin as an alternative to wrinkles and skin cancer.

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Jean Guerrero is a print journalism freshman from San Diego.

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