The Tanning Wars

Too much sun can damage your health, right? So why is brown still the new brown? Rachel Hills stays indoors to ponder why we’re so reluctant to come out of the bronzed age.

Coco Chanel has a lot to answer for: the little black dress, deglamorising the corset, women in pants and, of course, the tan. Where once showing a bronzed face in public would have you mistaken for a lady of the night, the moment Chanel stepped off the Duke of Westminster’s yacht at Cannes in 1920, everything changed. A bit like Kate Moss and the boots over jeans look, really.

Since then, a tan has become a symbol of health, wealth, athleticism and exoticism. Of sex. Even as the links between sun exposure and skin cancer were discovered in the 1960s, and modeling agency typhoon Eileen Ford declared the tan “dead” in 1988, the appeal of lightly (and often not-so-lightly) bronzed skin has endured.

And for all the warnings, we’re not just getting it out of a bottle. The days of lathering up in oil to literally fry on the beach may be long gone (although apparently Peter Andre is a fan of soaking himself in Diet Coke), but many young women are trading the sticky fingers of fake tan for something a little more au naturale.

It’s not that we don’t know the risks – most of us grew up in an era of full body swimsuits and slip slop slap. It’s that so many of us choose to do it despite our better judgment. Put it down to the recklessness of youth (“What? Me get skin cancer?”), vanity or the cynical resignation that the real damage to our skin has already been done, when we were kids. But modern tanning isn’t quite the reckless affair it was in Chanel’s or Farrah Fawcett’s day. These days, those who skip the bottle for the beach do so with an awareness of the risks involved, and the way they go about it reflects that.

Twenty-first century tanning is all about moderation. It seems sensible: a glass of red wine each day protects against disease, and French women don’t get fat because they stop at one Freddo frog instead of gorging the packet. Surely the same common sense precautions – covering your face with a towel or putting on sunscreen after an hour or two on the sand – apply to tanning.

Nina*, a 21-year-old Sydneysider of Italian descent, has been tanning for three years. “It makes me look thinner, it makes my clothes look better, and it makes me look healthier and less tired. I do love pale skin on the right person, but being Mediterranean, having a tan just looks better on me,” she says.

She admits she’s “starting to freak out about cancer” - she gave up smoking this year and plans to stop tanning in the next year or two. But for now, she takes precautions: covering her face with a T-shirt, putting sunscreen on freckles and moles, covering up after she’s been in the sun for a couple of hours, moisturising and staying out of the sun if she gets burnt. “But I’m at a low risk for skin cancer,” she reasons. “No moles at all, only three largish freckles and a few tiny ones.”

Nina’s views echo those of the tanning industry. In Australia, the Competition and Consumer Commission prohibits solarium owners from commenting on the safety of their operations, but online, phrases like “safe”, “moderate” and “natural” are all part of the rhetoric. Websites such as tanningtruth.com argue that tanning is “what your body is designed to do”, with testimonials from apricot-hued doctors, personal trainers and even a Reverend.

It’s not tanning which causes skin cancer, they say, but sunburn – and rather than steering clear of the sun altogether, they recommend developing a “base tan” in a controlled environment to prevent sunburn. And that controlled environment happens to bear a remarkable similarity to the industry they lobby for. “Indoor tanning is much easier to regulate than outdoor tanning,” says Patrick Holly of the Australasian Solarium Association.

It’s an appealing thought: that it’s the humiliating tomato hue of sunburn that causes skin cancer, not the socially-sanctioned tan. But while tanning may be a natural response to UV radiation, it’s not healthy. “There’s no way to get safe tan,” says National Skin Cancer Committee member Kylie Strong. “Any time your skin colour changes, that’s evidence that your skin has been damaged. And each time you damage your skin you’re exposing yourself to a risk of getting skin cancer later in life.”

And if you are hooked on the tanned look, it’s not like you need to go outside to achieve it. For 24-year-old swimwear model Harmony Douglas, a tan is just part of the trade (one US pageant she entered even included it as a category on which contestants were judged). But Douglas is as careful to protect her skin from the sun as even the most ivory-skinned lass.

“I don't tan in the sun because UVA and UVB rays contribute to premature aging, cause wrinkles, sun damage and cancer,” she says. Instead, she uses a combination of spray tanning and water soluble bronzer, as well as SPF 15 moisturiser and foundation on her face and SPF 30 sunscreen on her body.

But you have to wonder why the tan has so much appeal. You can’t just blame it on the models and celebs – for every Daria Werbowy there’s a Gemma Ward, and for every Kate Hudson there’s a Scarlett Johansson or Dita Von Teese. Even famous ditzes like Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson are smart enough to fake it – which begs the question, why aren’t we?

Some say a tan is simply sexier, and that our response to it is purely evolutionary – the survival of the most outdoorsy, if you will. But fair, freckleless skin was the European look du jour throughout much of the 18th and 19th centuries, and while solariums are taking off in China, skin whitening products are still popular throughout Asia. In the Middle East, popular satellite channels run advertisements for the Unilever skin whitening product, Fair & Lovely, which is portrayed as having the same beautifying effect on the wearer that a tan supposedly does in Western countries.

Others cynically dismiss a tan as a way white people can enjoy the exotic associations of dark skin without the discrimination – but that doesn’t explain why even the darkest Brazilians lie on the beach each summer in the hope of getting darker.

“Tans are what sociologists call a signifier, or a sign, because we have something that doesn't really mean what it means," says Canadian professor, Stephen Katz. "Unlike good posture, and an appropriate weight, having a tan does not mean you're healthy - at all.”

Fourteen hundred Australians die from skin cancer each year. “People need to be aware of how dangerous exposing yourself to the sun is,” says Strong. “The damage you do now as a young person can have consequences later in life.” And not necessarily that much later - skin cancer is largely diagnosed in the 25 to 44 age group, and melanoma is the most common cancer diagnosed in the 16 to 44 age group.

Still, despite Australia’s reputation as a sunburned nation, there are more who resist the pressure than you’d think. In high school, 18-year-old Queenslander Cora Chen would lather herself in oil, creams, gels and whatever else it took to fit in with her friends. “It was unthinkable to be sexy but pale,” she says.

These days, she’s embraced her natural hue. “To me, looking 'healthy' is not about being tanned but about eating right, exercising - all those things make someone look good. That's not to say I'm the healthiest person around, it's just that now, if I was to feel uncomfortable in a bikini, it wouldn't be because I have fair skin but because I've been pigging out on fries.”

Laura Jilwan, 23, feels similarly. “I'm happy to smother myself in sunscreen and keep my skin the way it is - it suits my colouring and I won't have skin cancer, wrinkles, dehydrated skin and premature aging to worry about.”

Which kind of cancels out the vanity factor. Farrah Fawcett may have been a bronzed sex symbol back in the 70s, but her days in the sun aren’t serving her so well 30 years on. And compared with death, wrinkles are child’s play.

“People seek a tan because they think it makes them look fashionable, but it’s a fashion you can die from,” says Strong. “You’ve got to ask what price you’re willing to pay for a tan?”

* Name has been changed.

- Rachel Hills

Published in Russh, January/February 2007.