Blogs and Stories
My Great Fake Bake Experiment
Day 5
I call Miami Sun to arrange my first spray tan session, and John the manager warns me to bring an umbrella. “You don’t want the rain to hit your skin,” he says. “There will be streaking, and it won’t be pretty.”
Naked inside the Mystic Tan Spray Unit, I hold my forearms parallel to the ground. The cold mist makes me feel like a car at a brushless carwash. Brown drops line my hairy legs. The active ingredient in the spray tan is dihydroxyacetone (DHA), the same as in over-the-counter bronzers. The chemical affixes itself to dead skin cells and produces a brownish tone.
That evening, my wife pushes me away as I put the moves on her. “You smell like a French fry,” she says.
Day 7
I do an eight-minute session at a salon near campus. I should note here that the tanning bed is quite a pleasurable experience—the ultraviolet rays release endorphins under the skin. One study found 27 percent of habitual tanners exhibited qualities of “tanorexia.”
After the session, I spend the rest of the day meeting with students. They compliment my darkening tan. Later, while lunching at a nearby bar, I notice that every waitress and prepster’s skin glows from lamp-born UV radiation. I sing along to Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner,” a song I can usually only tolerate in the summer. Perhaps it’s because my face is emitting its own sultry heat.
If Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could see me now, he’d compliment me on my tan, just as he did our president-elect shortly after the election.
Day 8
“Looking good!” shouts Steve, an employee at my gym. “Keep bangin’ those reps out.”
Why the compliments? The only time Steve’s ever mentioned my appearance is to note my profuse sweating. It has to be the tan. Steve, like everyone else at this gym, is a fake-baker.
Day 9
As an inverse test of my level of bronzeness, I attend goth night at a local rock bar.
Normally I’d fit right in—my typical near-albino complexion is a road map of banister-bumps and ingrown whiskers. But now, thanks to my new life on the tanning salon circuit—Jamaicametan, Get Tanalized, Tansmania, Tanzibar, Sunbelievable 4—I’m a traitor at this bar, a glowing symbol of what goth rock fights against: the shiny, happy people who tan. The goths regard me blankly—not glaring so much as simply not seeing me, as if I don’t exist. It doesn’t matter that I know and enjoy this music. My new tan has marked me as “other.” I guess this is what they mean when they say you can’t go home again.
I return to my apartment, watch two episodes of the vampire drama True Blood, and go to bed.
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Benjamin Sarlin is a reporter for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction. He lives in upstate New York.
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Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction. He lives in upstate New York.
Very entertaining. More from you would be deeply appreciated.
Please....google up some pictures of melanoma!! If you are worried your daughter doesn't recognize you now with a dark tan imagine the horror she'll feel looking at you when you are racked with cancer! The US Department of Health & Human Services, Public Health Service, National Toxicology Program Report on Carcinogens states that UV solar radiation, and use of sun lamps and sun beds are "known to be a human carcinogen." Women who visited a tanning parlor at least once a month were 55% more likely to later develop melanoma than women who didn't artificially suntan. Those who used sun lamps to tan while in their 20s had the greatest later risk, about 150% higher than similarly aged women who shunned tanning beds. Ok - you're not a woman but as you reported in your article, women make up the higher % of users. This blog should be pulled or at least a warning posted about the dangers to readers who might want to try this "experiment" at home. If you want to feel an endorphin rush have sex, sing, or excercise!
I LOVED it! Great take on what is becoming more and more a way of life for so many in this country!
I do not like the beds, thoughts of future cancer melt downs run through my brain BUT I have done it when I had something important coming up such as a Ball.
This past December when I had to help host a local generosity ball I decided to try the spray on...NEVER again. One bath and it's gone. Get any part of the body wet and it runs like a hooker standing outside the car of Hugh Grant.
...I have to admit, you look better with the tan! Tell the wife to get over it or there are tanned women on the other side of the fence!!
Funny how those stats reported above don't seem to have any facts as to times and duration...kinda makes me wonder if in fact the information is factual? I mean once a month and you raise the chances to 55% of getting cancer??? How many years of once a month? LOL 1 time? If your going to strap on that "brain from reading an article" then you, and we, would be bettered served by more true facts and not one site on the net that apparently blurbs.
Are people more worried about pasty skin than cancer or wrinkles? Or is the next article in the series about Botox and Rejeuvaderm?
As an Albany resident I am pleased to see Jerry Jennings tan get the attention it deserves. This also gives me the chance to share with the world the nickname he has in my house: PermaTan Man.
i think agree with noesis. i very much like the humor in your article, but i wonder if your writing style is getting bonus points because the article i read previous to this was the bag lady part 3 (heinous).
i would definitely like to see more!!
PS. ignore the humorless cancer-obsessives who will inundate this comment section. uhhh...satire anyone??
I really like Obama's tan!!
This is very very funny. He should keep the tan, he looks much better. Also, there was an obit recently in the Times of a dermatologist who believes that tanning doesn't cause cancer. So there's hope.
You got arrested four different times with four different tans? Impresive.
I loved this article, very funny, very self aware and so true about the different ways the left and right demonize this vanity.
I spent the year I was 20 enjoying my tanorexia. I am naturally very blonde and fair, and I was so dark that my complexion came out strange in photographs. I look back and cannot imagine how I let it get that bad - I just went regularly, increasing to the point I lay there for as long as they'd let me.
I worry now, nearing 30, that a year of taking my zen time in a tanning bed permanently damaged my skin... but I absolutely loved every second. Even the weird smell became enjoyable, because it triggered my happy and relaxed feelings of tanning.
Oh! the tan phobia's "we're all gonna die" with sun exposure/tanning beds. While googling, google Vitamin D and the NEW avalanche of data showing sunlight Vitamin D deficiency causing earliest deaths from everything, including melanoma cancer, and the NEW linking of hiding from the sun with Autism. Can't get enough in a pill or from food, humans need hours a day in the sun. Can't? use a tanning salon then!
I never though looking 'tubercular' looked healthy anyway....
freelisa, while you're googling Vitamin D deficiencies, also look up how long people need in the sun to get Vitamin D. Not long, if its regular. and you can do it clothed, as the Vitamin D goes through clothes.
Maybe its coz i'm Australian, and skin cancer is the most common cancer in Australia, that i think tanning beds are heinous. Funny article though
Thank you.
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