Community Chat

[MorningLover]

Marie Claire

The viral tanning trend exposing the dangerous side of algorithm-driven beauty.

An increasingly familiar scene is playing out on TikTok: a 20-something girl slathers her body in tan-accelerating oil, then lies out in peak sun. Next, the camera zooms in on her walnut-coloured tan and the stark outline of her bikini straps.

What follows are remarks about the UV Index. “As soon as that UV Index starts hitting six and up, this is where I’m at,” says one TikToker, reclining on her sun lounger, a tub of Carroten in shot.

“I’m roasting, and I love it; I love every minute of it. I have my little book with me, I’ve got my tanning gel, I’ve got my water, my phone’s on do not disturb. Life is good, man.” While another boasts, “A little burn goes a long way.” Welcome to Gen Z’s disturbing new world of ‘tanmaxxing’.

As the name suggests, the viral trend is all about maximizing your deepest, darkest tan. It encourages you to use the UV Index, which measures the intensity of the sun’s rays, to find times when the risk of burning is highest.

Some devotees are taking the trend even further by turning to Melanotan, an unlicensed synthetic peptide that mimics the hormone that stimulates melanin production. Marketed as a shortcut to a deeper tan with less sun exposure, it carries significant health risks and has been linked to the darkening of existing moles, the appearance of new moles and freckles, and other changes in skin pigmentation.

There’s an outcry from doctors and dermatologists, who call the trend “extremely dangerous”. The premise of tanmaxxing is, after all, to shun SPF in favour of deliberately exposing the skin to UV rays at their most powerful.

“A tan is essentially your skin responding to injury,” says Dr Ahmed El Muntasar, a GP and aesthetics doctor. “When your skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, it produces more melanin (the pigment that gives skin its colour) in an attempt to protect the DNA within skin cells from further damage.”

Dr Brendan Khong, a medical and aesthetic doctor, says the long-term effects are deeply problematic. “Every deliberate tanning session, whether it’s ‘creating a base tan’ or a ‘filter-ready glow’, is banking DNA damage in skin cells,” he explains. “That damage doesn’t repair itself – it accumulates.”

It will, at best, manifest as premature aging—wrinkles, pigmentation, loss of elasticity—and, at worst, cause skin cancer.

Gen Z already knows that. Yet they’re tanmaxxing anyway.

These are the same girls who raided Sephora for Drunk Elephant’s retinol and vitamin C serums, and whose slavish following of TikTok ‘skinfluencers’ turned the likes of Hyram Yarbro into a superstar. So what’s changed?

[JeanLouiseFinch]

Not much new except for the social media aspect.  I'm a Baby Boomer and we did it too. We were out all summer long, every afternoon at the local pool, sometimes the beach when we could drive, and using Johnson's Baby Oil, doing our best to get as dark as we possibly could.  One year I used something called Swedish Tanning Secret and I got really dark.  When we'd get sunburned in the beginning of summer we'd slather on the Noxema and lay ice cold washcloths all over ourselves to cool it down.  Then we would blister and peel. After the initial peel of the season, we just kept getting darker and darker.  

[Shanus]

@MorningLover   I'm looking into the future even though I may not be here to see it, but a lot of older looking wrinkled ladies who baked in the sun. They may even have melanoma...hope not. Any way you look at it, it's a stupid fad and where are their mothers?

[Shanus]

@MorningLover    Thankfully, now we know better.

*** Marie Claire is online? The magazine is gone...I loved it.

[CJC]

Young people tend to live in the moment. They don't concern themselves with the ailments of older age. Those things are for their grandparents and, of course, they themselves are immortal. I was one of those sun worshippers back in 60's-80's when there was very little warning about cancer, but my grandmother warned me about wrinkles. Didn't care....I just wanted to look good NOW. 

[LTT1]

@Shanus @MorningLover @CJC @JeanLouiseFinch 

Yep, me too but I was never much good at "enduring" the heat!

My friends used baby oil and next vinegar to remove the sting. I remember doing that lol!

[Jackson08]

@CJC  Same here.  Sometimes we added iodine to the baby oil.

[on the bay]

My sister and I did that too every summer with baby oil before it was called anything.

30 minutes laying in the sun on our backs and then 30 minutes on our stomachs, then hop in the waves, then repeat!

Our goal was to be tanned and also lose a few pounds before going back to school.

Now I make sure I go to the dermatologist every year.

[FranandZoe]

I did the same - wised up when I hit 30.  

[DrakesMomma]

As a GenX, I never did this but I did have sunburns because sunscreen wasn't a thing in the 1970s.  I have raised a GenZ child.  We are very fair.  I have taught him about sunblock from the time he was little.  Even now if he and his friends are spending time outside in the sun he insists they wear it.