The Tanned Ideal

In her review of the recent issue of Russh, Girl With a Satchel made some interesting observations on tanning, picking up on Russh editor Charlotte Scott's comments in response to a reader's letter exhorting Russh to be more judicious in the selection of images which may promote tanning. In response, Scott admits she loves the tanned look and points the magazine's readers to a feature elsewhere in the magazine documenting the latest in self-tanning products, whilst (perhaps ironically) endorsing the contingent fact that tanning is considered an aesthetic ideal: "White skin spells kooky and possibly bad at sport, while tanned skin is inextricably linked with health, vitality and hot Brazilians like Gisele Bundchen." All this is quite unfortunate. The most responsible way to disendorse tanning is not to endorse fake tanning, but to help bring about the disendorsement of tanning as an aesthetic ideal altogether, by refusing to feature models who are in any way unnaturally tanned (by self-tanning products or otherwise).

Advising people to use self-tanning products instead of sunbaking seems to me as misguided as pointing smokers in the direction of smokeless cigarettes. It does not in any solve (one of) the core problems, which is that, because of whatever series of historical accidents and contingencies, tanning represents a central Western (as distinct from in the East and South America, where pallor is big business**) aesthetic ideal, which will continue to exist no matter how many magazine editors say "Pale is the new pretty". It's not enough to simply present alternatives in these situations, but the aberrant ideals themselves have to be undermined and discredited.

As a medical student, I've been exposed to quite a bit of core epidemiology and I know for a fact that skin cancer in all its manifestations together represent a public health burden that is greater than what will ever be the case for anorexia nervosa or bulimia, two conditions for which the fashion industry has been traditionally an aetiological scapegoat. Just as magazines should under no circumstances feature models smoking, no magazine should feature unnaturally tanned models. The link between cancer and smoking is just as clear as it is between cancer and tanning. Just as it doesn't matter whether a model is "really" smoking or not in the photo shoot, it doesn't matter whether the tan is fake or not.

In this regard it seems to me that - as I have said on GWAS' blog - fashion magazines could do quite a bit of good public health work in disendorsing the tanned ideal. There has been much justifiable uproar over the years about the over-sexualisation of young models, as well as the glorification of waiflike thinness, but the tanned ideal has been curiously absent from the continual debate regarding the moral responsibilities of the fashion press.

**And has had equally appreciable public health costs: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2003/12/16/whitening_skin_can_be_deadly/