History
A vast majority of people feel better with a bronzed skin. Tanning is no longer a fashion; tanning, and especially sunless tanning, has become an attitude, even a lifestyle. Alarming reports saying that excessive sunbathing is risky to the skin and human body encouraged the alternative of sunless tanning, thus creating the opportunity of a whole industry to develop.
It is thought that a woman is the real beginner of the tanning trend. Believe it or not, Coco Channel, who got rid of the old and strict outlook of women, started the vogue of tanned skin. Suffice to say that getting on a cruise ship in 1920 at Cannes was equivalent to a new tendency and a new frame of mind forever.
Obsessive preoccupation for suntanning finally caused real trouble to a lot of people who abused sunlight. Out of the blue, skin cancer cases were reported and medical examination led to sunbathing as a cause. It is well-known now that improper and overexposure to the sun can cause serious health problems, skin problems. A correct moderation is highly recommended, since the sun is necessary: vitamin D is better fixed by sunlight.
Sunscreens claiming to protect against UVA and UVB and aggresively promoted were not protective enough and soon the new threat of skin cancer came into sight. In the 1970’sunless tanning was considered the “rescue” from all troubles. Unfortunately, by the 1970’s a lot of people learned that the sunburns they had suffered in their youth developed into skin cancers. The damage had been done already and their health could not be recovered. And the skin cancer rates are still growing.
Sunless tanning is now the best and most popular option and for those who cannot imagine themselves “wearing”? a pale skin while avoiding beach tanning. Nevertheless, sunless tanning has its (more reasonable) risks, but people are really determined to get over them. We have to admire the evolution from the primitive cosmetics and discoveries made by accident to tanning equipment and lamp technology. The father of the indoor tanning is German scientist Friedrich Wolff and the latest technology belongs to him.
Psychological aspects
A bronzed body has a magnetism that is hard to resist to. The message is an emotional one: happiness, welfare and public success are strictly connected to the gorgeous look, great shape and good health associated with a tanned skin. Western culture is insistently promoting this kind of appeal, this attitude. It appears that everybody wants to look perfect, to be fit and to be sun-tanned. In USA, a public figure in the media, politics, advertising, contests or competitions is a tanned person, no matter what. Most of them are practising sunless tanning for a perfect brown skin. Some of them are indoor tanning worshippers; especially the actors.
The American film and TV series industry is largely responsible for the worldwide fame of sunless tanning. The performers became movie stars and the location of the pictures — commonplaces. Teenagers especially shared the message and joined the lifestyle.
This is odd enough, since two hundreds years ago, only pale skin was admitted as perfect and desirable. Tanned people came only from lower classes; upper classes were not allowed sun-exposure. Otherwise, they would have been assimilated to poor people, working outdoor.
All the sunless products and methods: self tanning cream, self tanning spray, lotion, tanning accelerator and tanning injections like Melanotan 2 are always available for the elite: the entertainers, for instance. Self tanning reviews are letting out that the first to join the best and the latest sunless products or techniques are the famous people.
The psychological aspect is overwhelming. There is no health preoccupation; it’s a purely cosmetic reason. People are obsessed with getting a brown or golden skin because they are induced that a successful and attractive person is a tanned person. To achieve this goal by all means, ordinary people ignore the rhetoric used by the psychological community. In fact, they are subtly handled by all the commercials, fitness competitors, beauty contests and TV series.
The psychologists consider that the actors, top-models, entertainers and, on the other side, the parents, media and government ought to change the public point of view and this worship. All these people have to repair the damages. Tanning surveys bring out that the audience is taking over with little judgement what the celebrities and leaders display all of a sudden, setting the trends.
Indoor tanning seems to be healthier for the skin but there are some reasons for questioning the supposed self control and self-assurance it provides. Self-confidence is a great expectation but it is hard to say whether it is real and working. This is some kind of warning from some of the psychologists concerned with the tanning cult.
