Tanning: Reasoning Now, No Regrets Later

It’s coming. The calendar might make you think otherwise, but it’s just around the corner. What is it? Tanning season. You know how I know? I’ll tell you straight up with no hesitation. I know because I still feel the urge beginning in February of each year. I am a recovering tanning addict - did my time and paid my price. Truth be told, I am still paying every single day. If I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would do things a heck of a lot differently.

My tanning and skin cancer experience

I spend quite a bit of time throughout the late winter and first part of spring thinking about what it felt like to tan and how satisfied I was after every skin-scorching session. Not normally a person to dwell on the “would’ves, could’ves, and should’ves,” I do dwell on the fact that tanning in salons helped land me in my current position. I have a list of things I’d give anything to be able to say to my 20-year-old self.

Advice for my younger self about tanning

Given the opportunity to shake 20-year-old me by the shoulders, I would let the following comments fly:

• Do you really want wrinkles and age spots in your 30s? They don’t age like fine wine, sister, and they don’t ever fade. You’ll be stuck with them forever. The creams and lotion and potions don’t work.
• Despite what you think, you do smell burnt and everyone around you can smell it, too. Yes, even after a shower everyone can smell you.
• There’s a reason there are warning stickers on the tanning bed. Geez. Wake up, already!
• You hate wearing those goggles, don’t you? Those rays are going to damage your eyes whether you believe it or not.
• You’re only going to get red. Your skin won’t ever be the tan color you want it to be no matter how long or how often you lay. Accept it. Pale is healthier.
• You’re burning, goofball. Every time you lay in a tanning bed, you’re adding another burn and damaging your skin over and over and over...
• You are going to have two babies in 2001 and 2002, and they need to see a smarter you than the you who climbs out of that tanning bed with palm tree stickers on her stomach. C’mon.
• Hey, in a little more than 10 years, Marti is going to point out a mole on your arm. She’s going to tell you to see the doctor, and the look on your doctor’s face won’t be comforting. You’re going to develop melanoma. And this tanning bed here? It’s helping you get there even faster. You really want that?
• Oh, and get this! After you have melanoma, you are going to have a great time with basal cell carcinoma several times. Each one of those will be a new surgery, too. Stitches, girl. Lots of them.
• Heads up! You are going to see a dermatologist on a regular basis after that melanoma. Every time you go, she is going to find new precancerous spots on your face and chest. She will freeze them off and leave a little white scar. Yep. More scars. And this will be long after you have stopped all this tanning nonsense. It’s going to haunt you for years to come.
• You might want to sit for this next one. After the dermatologist gets tired of telling you that you have more precancerous spots, she is going to prescribe chemotherapy in the form of a cream. It’s called Efudex, and you can’t imagine how difficult it is to use. The side effects alone are enough reason to step hard and fast away from the tanning salon. You’ll use it for years.
• This tanning bed is trying to kill you. Seriously. Run!

Share the risk of tanning

You know what’s funny? We believe in plenty of things we can’t see, but we don’t believe in the negative things that await us in the future despite the glaring signs we get from those around us who have been in our shoes - our future shoes. Take a moment and read that list again. Share it with a twenty-something who needs to hear it.