Is Tanning Going Extinct?

Is Tanning Going Extinct?

By Christopher Cumo

My first day in graduate school at The University of Akron I met all the other grad students, one of whom said in astonishment, “Man, you’re dark,” as though he had never seen a white guy with brown skin. That summer I had tanned the working class way- as a landscaper. The vile job offered the incidental benefit of a lavish tan. As I reflected on his words, the thought occurred to me that he was pasty white. In fact the rest of the students and the professors were also pale. Even the professor of African American history was a sun deprived white man. They all looked like they had never been exposed to a fluorescent bulb let alone the sun. The undergraduates looked pretty much the same. To be sure, a handful had the dark skins that come only from the sun or a tanning bed but the majority clearly did not tan.

True, in northeastern Ohio there are many overcast days on which the sun’s rays are rarer than tungsten. Even though this area may be inhospitable to hard-core tanners, other factors may be at work. Tanning may not be as popular an activity as it once was. In my youth I remember the television actresses and actors who were dark. The bikini-clad models in magazines were not only beautiful; they had the deep Amazon tans that made them alluring. Hawaiian Tropic models were deliciously brown. Tanning, the models seemed to say, was not something they did on their off hours. It was a full time avocation woven into the fabric of their skin. Dark skin was a desideratum. It was destiny.

Today, as my stint as a graduate student made clear, tanning seems to be a marginal activity. The models in Woman’s Day and Glamour have only modest tans. Whether they even tan is unclear. Some may simply spray on a tan. (The spray tan has always struck me as disingenuous; as a cheap and easy way of faking a tan.) The golden brown tans of yesteryear, like a closet full of ugly clothes, have become a fashion faux pas. Moderation prevails, as Aristotle thought it would. The long hours in a tanning bed or stretched out beneath the sun have, it seems, become a relic of the past, a dinosaur on the verge of extinction.

Jeremy Saffell, owner of Exotic Sun in Canton, believes that tanning has fallen on hard times because of bad publicity. The travails of tanning do not sadden Dr. Mark Berbaum, a dermatologist in private practice in Canton and a faculty member at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown. One-third of his patients have skin damage from exposure to ultraviolet light. The sun ages skin so that tanners look older than they are, says Berbaum. More serious is the threat of skin cancer. Every hour someone dies of melanoma in the United States, notes Berbaum, who believes there is no safe way to tan.

Tanning may not be entirely good for us but thankfully some people still do it. For instance, every day more than one hundred people tan at L.A. Tanning in Canton. Perhaps these folks know that ultraviolet light stimulates the body to manufacture Vitamin D. In addition to this benefit, there is a primal, elemental quality to tanning. As complicated as life can be, tanning is an inherently simple activity. One need only bare the skin to the elements and wait for the sun to work its magic. The rest is a matter of judgment. Stay in the sun fifteen minutes three or four days per week for a modest but noticeable tan. Linger longer for a savage, seductive tan. Revel in your moment under the sun.

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