So the fitness club I go to promotes tanning! They even refer to it as “healthy” on advertisements in the gym and encourage people to get “a base tan” before heading south on vacation! Shame on them! —Pale is the new tan

This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.

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  5. Get up in their shit about it OP.

    File a complaint about misleading advertising here:
    http://www.adstandards.com/en/

    and/or here:
    http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/sit…

    and if you want to talk to someone in person to file a complaint our provincial consumer affairs office address and phone numbers is listed here:
    http://www.the-cma.org/?WCE=C=47|K=22…

    You can even try to sick CBC Marketplace on their asses, who knows, if enough other tanning salons and gyms in Canada are advertising tanning as healthy, they might just do a story about it.
    http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/blog/contact…

    For anyone who’s interested they just did a decent (could have been better) job tackling the bullshit that is homeopathy, go Marketplace! http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2011/cureorc…

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  6. What gets me is that these tanning idiots will have skin like a camel’s bag by the time they’re 50. Yeah, that’s reeeeaaaallll healthy to bake till you look like a goddamn Oompa-Loompa.

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  7. nothing like the look and smell of roasting flesh, in some type of cooker. oh, you are talking of humans, oh well. we can’t all be great looking down southers now, can we?
    let’s just agree to let them die, and not provide aid, when they come down with all these deseases from their cooking machines.

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  8. In the 90s my sister and I got what we now call “our welfare tans” while we lived in Calgary. Tacky shit seemed to be what Cowtown was all about back in the day. I also came up with the shorty cut offs and cowboy boot look for that then assbackwards kerosene cowboy burgh. I digress. Anyway, we were tanned up like the skank Jersey Shore bee-otches. Eight years later my sis had a six inch section of skin removed from her upper arm, she had skin cancer. Dr attributed to the tanning beds. So a word of advice, tanning beds are pretty much melanoma coffins. Take it from a gal who used iodine and baby oil in the 70s to tan as a teen. I am covered in freckles, but thankfully, no cancer/melanoma as a result. What a waste of your health and money. Tanning beds are for boys and girls with low self esteem and some delusional idea it just makes them look more “natural.”

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  10. Call every single tanning business in the phone book and they will all tell you that tanning beds are safe. Safer than the sun even. Doctors have a different opinion but they are not making money from tanning services so they don’t need to lie to you.

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  12. FYI: the place on the darkside of the bridge uses the same sweat-soaked towel to clean all their tanning beds after every use. Altogether now…”Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

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  13. Yeah this pisses me off too. I went to Punta Cana with the BF in January and he said he was going to get a base tan before going. I tried to talk him out of it but he went anyway. He went to “Conan’s nickname” Beach and the woman there told him all this BS like that he ABSOLUTELY NEEDED a base tan or he would burn, yadda yadda. And then she asked how long he wanted in for and he said it was his first time so not too long. So he went in for like 6 mins and burned. The next time he went the same woman was almost FORCING him to go in for longer. Actually she did set the timer for 8 minutes and told him if he didn’t like it he could just get out at six minutes. And then the last time he went she neglected to tell him the tanning bed he was in was like a mega-super something or other that’s closer and stronger. I can’t believe this whole “base tan” BS! It’s lies, doctors and dermatologists KNOW it and tanning places are still allowed to advertise this? I burn soo easily so you know what I did when we went down South? I bought a bottle of SPF 60 and applied and reapplied throughout the day and didn’t get burned. Most people forget about the reapplying and just assume they got burnt because they didn’t have a base tan. Aw well. I’ll be a nice and smooth 35-year-old while other women my age look like wrinkly oranges 🙂

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  14. A base tan does help. It really does. You will still burn but it will take longer to do so. SPF 60 is like mayo, ew. Now I’m not saying people should go out to tanning places especially to get base tans. Put on a lower SPF and spend some time in the sun before you go. You’ll get a little colour. Nothing is worse than the post vacay peel though.

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  15. I read somewhere back a few years ago that the lamps are a slightly diff wavelength, so you could tan yourself to Oprah’s shade and still burn.

    I personally think any dark tanning is fuckin’ retarded. Not only because of the health risk, but you look like a tit when you have a perma-tan and everyone knows that you went to Cape Breton for Christmas, not Puerto Vallarta.

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  16. OP, change to another gym if that’s their philosophy on healthy. Next thing they’ll be installing a french fry and burger joint next to the cycle class for the fat people to keep their energy up.

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  17. last time south I used SPF 60 – and I burn VERY easily. I didn’t burn and got a nice glow by the end of the week.

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  18. sebastian had to switch gyms because he made everyone at the last gym (both male and female; gay and straight) very uncomfortable by wearing a tutu and begging dudes to let him spot them when they would be doing something like cardio, signing-in or drinking Gatorade..

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  20. When I go on vacation I come back just as white because I actively try to prevent burning and tanning. No skin cancer for me, thanks. I’m a pasty white chick and I have made peace with that.

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  22. It’s banned in NB for kids under 18. And when I was in getting a haircut, my hairdresser was asking people to sign a petition to allow kids with parental consent to tan. As we all know… there are parents who FAIL at that whole parenting thing, I really don’t mind a blanket ban for kids.

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  23. I think tanning for kids should be banned…
    Although I was pissed as a kid when we got banned from taking clackers, yo-yos and marbles to school, playing Red Rover and Snap the Whip, eating Tang crystals and chewing bubblegum…
    Adults ruin everything.

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  26. Eeeeeeeeeeek! Put her next to Keith Richards and you’d swear you had matching alligator skin luggage

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  30. When I was in Punta Cana, there were these two lobster on the beach, reapplying their SPF 4 tanning oil every so often as they roasted for hours each day.

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