Tanorexia Nervosa
It's easy to want a big mistake
Bill Ward - "Hate" - When the Bough Breaks - 1997
When Coco Chanel returned from the Riviera a century ago, the aftermath of the accidental sunburn she sported changed the world. Before, pale skin was considered a healthy, aristocratic look and tans were for the unwashed peasant masses who toiled outdoors. No more. Tanning became a fashion accessory.
Dude. No. Just...No!
One nice day in the 1990s I visited FlozWorld to find Reagan assembling a crude, early incarnation of a long-wavelength UVA-bazooka home tanning bed. Concerned, I asked if building a device to emit a group 1 carcinogen, bedfellow with plutonium, asbestos, tobacco, and the ever-dreaded sulfur mustard, was a deft use of their resources.
He replied with a belly laugh and his trademark knowing guilty gaze.
Reagan and Neila were big time into tanning, which they called "laying out." It drove me nuts, for I perpetually wanted to have fun in the pool with quite fun Reagan, but he would alternate between playing with me and sun-brewing his big pecs and lean waist clad in his blue Speedo banana hammock, the aroma of Coppertone thick around us.
In our world, laying in the sun for its own sake has never been a thing and never shall be so long as there remains within our grasps a book, musical instrument, friend to chat with, scenic overlook, or hammer with which to repeatedly hit ourselves in the heads and crotches while sitting under the table.
The Toaster Oven
This damn thing was a humanoid-sized wood frame with a clear acrylic or glass bed over a bunch of old-school UVA radiation tubes. After the first few times Reagan fried himself on the thing and I saw the results, I got to calling it The Toaster Oven.
At least once, he came out of the broiler overcooked after falling asleep on the thing or a timer failure or something. Wait...did it even have a timer? Sigh.
How Would Ya Like Yer Princess Cooked?
Perhaps worst of all, I walked in there one day and little Future Princess Corn Log herself, age about 6, was laid out on the bloody thing in a bikini.
ME: Ya sure that's what y'all wanna be doin'?
REAGAN: Oh, it's OK for a little while.
ME: I fear perhaps not.
REAGAN: It doesn't take long to work.
ME: That's not necessarily a good thing, dude.
No, it's not OK even for five seconds, especially for a white child with Mutchie (perhaps), Mom, and Reagan's whole fair-skinned bunch in her family tree. And the notion of a girl in the 1st or 2nd grade so seized by vanity as to be tanning is not a nice thought.
Wow. A girl named "Tiffany," natured and nurtured by Flozberks, havin' vanity issues? Color me incredulous, which I imagine to be sort of a reddish-gray.
Check out those bronzed kiddos. A little girl not far out of kindergarten who is tanned and in a bikini is being put on display. This is not a good look and it's no surprise that neither of those children developed properly, to put it nicely.
It's so Flozberk, too. The poorly framed shot. Clenched, artificial smiles. Bronze vanity fest. So synthetic and clumsy. For the record, this was their Christmas card photo from, I'd say, 1992 or so.
After a long stare, this is just awful. If mommy wants to play with dollies, there's a toy store at the mall. May this folly not come back to mightily haunt them. Childhood UVA overexposure greatly increases melanoma risk.
The World Be Slightly Less Stupid Now
Years later, as the effects of carcinogenic radiation became better known, we learned the crude hardware Reagan used was especially at odds with the human organism, causing massive elevation in risk for deadly melanoma and other cancers. Even now with much better gear and methods, indoor tanning is risky.
That thing Reagan built, though, thirty years behind today's dangerous tanning scene and having low standards even for then, was downright barbaric. The gap is huge.
There is no such thing as a safe tan, and considering the thousands of hours they'd spent tanning outside in brutal Texas sun plus the souped-up administration of the worst possible version provided by The Toaster Oven, it's a bit surprising that Neila and Reagan survived sufficiently long to wreak half of that mountain of havoc. In a way, I gotta hand it to the fuckers.
I actually had a nightmare not too long ago in which Neila died due to melanoma. It was terrible.
And the Bronze Medal for Asshattery Goes To...
The more one considers it, the more interesting opting to deplete one's resources and trouble oneself to build such an utterly daft contraption becomes. Yes, people must be spared the grim spectre of compulsive tanning herding them outdoors away from the TV.
The sun awaits us...outside, and seems to be rather reliable. It's right there, it is, and our area runs far above average for sunny days. And, ol' Sol adds the benefit of vitamin D production from UVB . It obviously remains best, though, to get your D elsewhere.
In a way, The Toaster Oven, which, of course, stood right by the back door out to the cha-CHING-afied hot tub gazebo tiki bar thingee patio and yard, was like squandering resources to build a machine that rains, snows, or releases flocks of crows in the house.
The prowess of these people in both wasting and counterproducing is quite depressive, indeed, and this was part of a rampage of facepalmy Flozberk overspending and folly that got rolling during their fool's gold period of success. Some folly, though, has a special way of coming back to kick ya in the ass (and square in the round hole, NOT the glutes), way down the road,
And All for Nothing. Nothing.
And all for nothing. Nothing.
I swear, the things that damn people will get to doin' when they gots nowhere near enough licks o' damn sense, not enough damn work, an' too much damn money.