TANOREXIA : Having a Golden Tan Can Become a Compulsion for Some Salon Patrons
A movie theater manager by day, a sun-machine worshiper by night, Bruce Landegent does not think of himself as a man obsessed. Still, he understands how it could happen--how a person could get carried away in the quest for the perfect tan.
“It would probably be hard for me to quit,” Landegent said one recent evening in the lobby of a Westside tanning parlor, his burnished face newly reddened by a blast of ultraviolet rays. Landegent, who is 30, has a $50-per-month habit, tanning three or four nights each week for the last few years. “I know it’s not good for you. But to me, it’s worth it. . . .
“If I miss a few days, I feel pale.”
The suntanning industry has a word for it: tanorexia. Like painfully thin anorexics who complain about being fat and go on diets, “people will come in and be just as dark as they can be--and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m so white,’ ” explained Mark Brammeier, the surprisingly fair-skinned manager of the Le Beach Club salon that has Landegent as a member.
Danger of Cancer
Tanorexics, it is now well known, are excellent candidates for skin cancer. “A lot of my patients are the type of people who used to spend all their time out on the beach trying to get a tan,” said Dr. Ronald Moy, a dermatologist at UCLA Medical Center and a director of the American Cancer Society.
Tanning salon operators say they advise people not to overdo it--but please do it indoors. Dermatologists, meanwhile, advise people not to do it, period, outdoors or in. The perfect tan, skin doctors suggest, is the one you were born with.
This war has been raging for years now, and some dispatches from the front suggest that the palefaces are winning. The sale of sun block has rocketed. Vogue and other fashion magazines have declared pale to be “in.” The California Legislature in January enacted a law that requires tanning salons to warn customers of the risks. Zonker Harris, the Doonesbury comic-strip character who had a passion for tanning, gave up his toasty look a few seasons back. “The California Tan May Go the Way of California Condor,” overstated a Wall Street Journal headline.
Too bad the condor can’t go the way of the tanning parlor. Only a decade after the first tanning salon opened in the United States, about 19,000 are in business across the country, industry representatives say. More than 100 tanning shops operate in sunny Los Angeles, and a random survey suggests that business is good--even in summer.
‘A Lot of Shoddiness’
Thousands of people too busy to hit the beach or lie by the pool show up each day--especially after sundown--to places with names like Jiffy Tan, California Gold, Tan Your Hide, Tan It All, the Covina Beach Club (in the East San Gabriel Valley) and Manhattan Tan (as in Manhattan Beach).
Business slows down when the real sun is high and the days are long, and scores of parlors have opened and quickly closed in recent years. “There’s a lot of shoddiness in the business,” one owner acknowledged. Suntan entrepreneurs say the market is stabilizing.
“People say the white look is in and suntan is out,” said John Anderson, president of the Sun Days chain. “But look at major movies stars . . . Mel Gibson. Sylvester Stallone. They’re always tan in the movies. . . . When all that publicity was hitting--that the tan look was out--it didn’t affect our business at all. It really didn’t.”
It was the best of tans, it was the worst of tans--it was, in fact, Coco Chanel’s tan that helped make tanning what it is today. For centuries, fashion historians report, a tan was the mark of the working classes. But in 1922, Chanel, the influential fashion designer, returned from a cruise wearing a darker hue, and a look was born. In time, sun-bronzed skin became a symbol of affluence--of excess leisure time by the pool, on the beach, on the slopes.
Five years ago, increasing reports of skin cancer--now up to 500,000 new cases each year in the United States--prompted the American Academy of Dermatology to launch its anti-sunning campaign. Explanations for the increase range from the aging of baby-boomers to the depletion of the Earth’s ultraviolet-filtering ozone layer.
Late Start in L.A.
The artificial tanning business began booming in Southern California about the same time. The trend arrived late in Los Angeles for the obvious reason. “It seemed like selling ice to the Eskimos,” said Brian Hebberling, co-owner of the Electric Sun chain.
What ersatz sunshine merchants discovered were that many Southern Californians wanted a tan but couldn’t find the time for the outdoors. Some salons cater to their busy clients by providing rooms with telephones, allowing them to conduct business while they brown.
Although physicians generally condemn tanning machines as harmful, salon operators argue that current tanning machines are safer than natural sunlight because the machines emit fewer “burning” ultraviolet B rays and more of the “tanning” ultraviolet A rays.
Regardless, dermatologists say a tan is itself a sign of damaged skin.
“I guess in an absolute world, they’re correct,” said Wayne Lavassar, owner of the Le Beach Club chain. “The case for getting a tan is that we look better and we feel better. And if we are going out of doors, it does provide protection from a painful burn. That is our body’s natural defense against the sun.
“The reason for indoor tanning is we can achieve that cosmetic benefit, and if we’re sensible, we can get that benefit while minimizing the risk.”
Typically, the customer enters a private room, dons protective eye wear and lies on a plexiglass bed outfitted with light tubes. Sessions of no longer than 30 minutes are recommended, and no more often than once every 48 hours.
Wide Range in Fees
Fees range considerably. One popular club offered a four-month membership special with unlimited visits for $129. Another charges $9 per month, plus $1 for every 10 minutes. By contrast, a parlor that uses expensive machines that offer only ultraviolet A rays charges $49 per month plus $10 per 30-minute session.
For that price, one parlor guarantees a tan without a burn. But this type of tan produced by ultraviolet A rays provides no protection against the sunburn, so use of a sun block is also recommended.
But Moy, the UCLA dermatologist, says the dangers of an intense dose of ultraviolet light--be it A or B rays--is unknown. Two decades ago, he points out, X-ray technology was used to treat cancer. Only years later did doctors determine that those treatments enhanced the chances of a person developing skin cancer.
“Ten years from now, 20 years from now, I’m sure I’ll be seeing people who went to these tanning parlors,” Moy said.
But at Le Beach Club, the customers just keep coming.
One was Dr. Tom Wheeler, an ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon, who told how he turned his own sensitive skin from pale to brown with his own program of prescription medications, ointments and machine tanning. Another was hairdresser Aaron Solis, a pasty Englishman who told how he planned to impress friends arriving from London with his “California tan.”
Then there was 44-year-old Cheryl Schneider, who told the story of how her mother, a Palm Springs resident, had developed such a severe case of skin cancer that it affected her deep facial tissue. Surgery caused some disfigurement, she said.
Schneider thinks a sun machine is safer than the real thing. But, she was asked, why tan at all?
“The way I think, I’m going to go one way or another,” Schneider said. “I feel better when I have a tan.”
