Getting Baked

“My issues with tanorexia go way back to high school, when tanning beds first hit the scene,” said Julie Dey, a pretty twenty-eight-year-old from Apple Valley. “Girls would make tanning appointments and get out of school to go tanning. I have pictures of girls at my prom who look like they were painted in blackface!”

Since the explosion of artificial tanning in the mid-eighties, we’ve all known people who couldn’t seem to get tan enough. Back in my day, there was a bleached-blonde cheerleader with such a severe case of tanorexia that she looked like an orange Oompa Loompa in a crotch-length miniskirt. A few years after high school, she was arrested for doing the dirty work for her drug-dealing boyfriend. During her two-year stay behind bars, she wrote a letter complaining about losing her ten-year tan because the gawd-awful place didn’t have a tanning bed. She was just the kind of person who would go to prison and gripe about its effect on her skin.

But not every tanorexic is a felon. Tanorexia can afflict the most innocent booth-bather. Take, for example, our dearly departed KARE-11 anchorman, Paul “Major Tan” Magers, whose pastel ties and handkerchiefs were the perfect foil for his constantly copper kisser. Or that beefy dude running around Lake Harriet whose wee jogging shorts show off his perpetually tanned legs of steel. Or the workout-happy mom in the cubicle next to yours who removes her wedding band at least twenty times a day to check her tan line. Unfortunately, tanorexia has many faces. (Albeit all really tan.)

According to the American Cancer Society, more than one million new cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed this year. Residents of the Sunbelt states have a one-in-three chance of being diagnosed with skin cancer, while UV-deprived Minnesotans have the lowest rate in the United States. The number of cases has doubled in the last thirty years, which experts attribute to exposure to higher levels of UV radiation and increased use of tanning beds. Booths are less likely than sun exposure to cause melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, but they are still a factor. Despite the risks, more than thirty million Americans use tanning beds. And it’s not just Americans going under the lights. Doctors in the U.K. recently endorsed the term “tanorexic” to describe Britain’s growing legion of tanning-bed enthusiasts, though the word has been murmured among the self-deprecating fake-bakers for years. (“My friend Travis is tanorexic, too,” Dey said. “We always say, ‘Omigod! We are so tanorexic!’”)

A more genteel form of tanorexia can be found among those who use spray booths and gel applications, which mimic a deep tan without the dangerous radiation. “We have tons of clients using Mystic Tan, old and new,” said Laura Johnson. She is the manager of Boss Tanning in Golden Valley, which hosts the metro area’s highest concentration of tanning salons. The salon also uses high-pressure tanning beds, which Johnson said block ninety-nine percent of the UVB rays that cause painful booth burn. “People sometimes shy away from the lights for aging reasons. But a lot of people are tanorexic. They just like tanning. We have about fifty or so people who come in at least four times a week who I’d say are tanorexic, I guess.”

Despite the availability of gels and mist, Dey prefers tanning the old-school way. “I tried the Mystic Tan once and I went pumpkin girl,” she said. She wears her tanorexia like a gold medal (OK, maybe a bronze), and becomes defensive about her love for UV rays if lectured about their dangers. “Don’t tell me what to do with my life when you smoke a pack a day and don’t wear your seatbelt. I mean, we’re all gonna die some day. Seriously, dude.”

And for the folks who ask her where she got that great tan in the middle of February, Dey offers this: “Ummm, yeah. You just saw me yesterday? OK, I was on planet Mercury. You too can go there and get a wonderful orange glow on your skin!”
—Molly Priesmeyer