When I was in my late teens, my mom used to slide magazine clippings under my bedroom door with headlines about “the dangers of tanning”. She’d include notes saying things like “if you won’t listen to me, read this,” or simply “FYI.” After a few emergency trips to the local dermatologist to treat my bright red, blistering, sunburned chest, she was desperate to save my youthful, delicate skin. For my friends and me, however, tanning outdoors slathered in baby oil, or indoors confined within skin-searing tanning beds, was our way to a dreamy, ‘healthy’ glow. My mom pleaded, “But honey you have such fair skin.” Enraged, I’d snarl back at her “I do not. I get very tan.” Coming from a green-eyed, red-haired, freckle-faced young woman, it seems absurd that at one point I even yelled at her “my complexion is olive!” Such is youth and the naïve destruction of the youthful skin for which we all now pine.
