'Brown-is-beautiful' mania knows no fear

We're fast approaching spring break, which means, among other things, a big boom for the tanning industry.

Certainly tanning salons get by for the rest of the year by capitalizing on the truly vain among us, but those looking to get what white people refer to as a "base tan" -- not unlike putting a primer on a wall before painting -- can triple the numbers booking appointments at this time of year.

London itself has more than 30 tanning salons, in addition to clubs and gyms that have tanning beds in change rooms.

There are medical professionals who would like to see the city tackle this industry much as they've gone after the smoking segment; after all, the link to cancer has been established for both. (Admittedly, someone tanning does not cause unwanted UVA rays to waft over to nearby non-tanners, but the principle is not dissimilar.)

People like Dr. Terry Polevoy of the Acne Care Clinic in London are on record as saying Health Canada is doing nothing to regulate the industry. He thinks it should be outlawed.

Conventional wisdom (exclusive of tanning salon owners) seems to be that a 15- to 30-minute session on a tanning bed results in the same amount of radiation as an entire day at the beach.

The tanning industry touts the use of UVA rays, which they consider safer than the UVB rays that cause burning. Medical professionals are inclined to scoff at this assertion, saying it is the production of melanin, the agent that causes the skin to darken, that is the cancer-causing culprit.

The deep dark Coppertone tan has become passe and most tanners these days are looking to get a light to medium toasting. But the bottom line seems to be that white people don't like being white. The relative attractiveness of skin colour is subjective, but few seem to think lily-white is right. Admittedly, even if most of us avoid the sun we still aren't going to look like Nicole Kidman, so colour can relieve the winter pastyness.

This "brown is beautiful" attitude is surprisingly consistent all over the world.

Europe is considered the "motherland" of indoor tanning, primarily in Western Europe and since the 1970s in some Eastern European countries as well. The United Kingdom has more than 20,000 places to tan, and Germany has twice as many tanning salons as Canada.

Australia has seen a 10-per-cent increase in the number of sunbathers in the past three years, and Australian skin cancer experts who had successfully campaigned against tanning are mystified. Australia, they say, used to be exemplary on the issue. What went wrong? Supermarket sales of tanning lotions rose 18 per cent last year, while sales of sunscreens decreased.

Japanese teens are spending hours on tanning beds getting a deep dark tan and Sweden has begun to crack down on the tanning industry, doling out ominous warnings and putting regulations in place.

A recent Swedish study concluded that people who used tanning beds more than 10 times a year were seven times more likely to develop malignant melanoma than those who did not use tanning beds as often.

One western country that hasn't particularly embraced the toasted look is Finland.

It has put stringent regulations in place for tanning salons, and while long dark Finnish winters do encourage Finns to rejoice at the return of the sun, few Finns tan themselves in a solarium very often. Most never do. Maybe after six months of darkness Finland is one of the few places that can see at least some attractiveness in white skin. Or at least they're resigned to it, which most countries evidently aren't.