Never thought I’d be writing a post here based on a conversation with my hairdresser (but then I never thought I’d live to see the Immigration minister openly avowing that African refugees are less welcome here than other kinds or that we’d be making prospective citizens sit an embarrassingly banal and pompous citizenship test, either.)
Anyway, the day before yesterday I went to have my hair cut and coloured at the campus hairdressers, and was very surprised to find out that the woman who had owned and run the salon for fifteen years had sold it last week, and the new owner was doing my hair. While I was in there four different people came in wanting to use the solarium, and to my initial surprise, all were turned away. Because they’d paid in advance for lots of sessions, one or two went off a bit disgruntled, even though the new owner took their details to send them refund cheques. She told me that she’s getting rid of the tanning bed as soon as she can, and she won’t be replacing it with a spray-tan booth either. “I don’t think it sends a good message to the students,” she explained. She went on to say that since the death of Clare Oliver last month a huge grass roots change has begun to take place in the salon industry in Victoria in terms of its attitude to solarium tanning. The small to medium operators are getting out of the business. She thought it would be next to impossible for her to dispose of the salon’s tanning bed by selling it, and she added that even if she’d wanted to continue offering tanning sessions, she wouldn’t have been able to justify paying the massive increase in the salon’s insurance premium which sunbeds are now attracting.
In Victoria, South Australia, and I understand federally, there are indications that bills will soon be put forward to regulate the solarium industry, but, happily, it almost looks as if sunbed numbers and usage might be declining under the more enduring influence of market forces and public opinion anyway.
I have had 2 clients (I’m a health professional) in the past month, women in their 20′s, who have decided to stop going to solariums due to the recent publicity. Not sure if the message is filtering through about general tanning but the solarium=cancer message seems to be sticking.
This is a big step forward for common sense. Tanning beds give you cancer and fake tan lotion gives you horrible orange skin. It’s amazing what we’ll put ourselves through to try and convince others that we would make a good sexual partner.
That’s awesome. Good on ‘em.
Next on the list is getting people to stop wearing high heels!
Jobby, I remember reading in Bitch Magazine about a woman in the USA who claimed that her business was “feminist”. Her business, though, consisted of cutting out a joint in women’s little toes so that they could fit in to those ridiculously pointed high heels. Yes, physically altering a woman’s skeletal structure in order for her to wear uncomfortable fashion can be considered “feminist” if you believe hard enough.
Which inevitably raises some uncomfortable associations with Chinese footbinding. I suppose if you argued long and hard enough you could probably convince yourself that even that was all about feminine sexual empowerment.
Boots are much much sexier though.
Move to Perth. Natural skin cancer is all the rage here. Unbelievably though there are such salons here too.
Worst raises a good point. Tanned skin perhaps ought not to be fashionable, but given that it is then solariums are less likely to give you skin cancer for a given amount of tanning than the sun will (because the UV wavelengths are controlled in the former). So banning solariums might easily increase the rate of melanomas.
Maybe, DD, I have no idea at all about the scientific part or about the reasons why people go for sunbeds over the actual sun. Perhaps it’s because a sunbed tan is quicker to get and maintain, and not weather dependent. I don’t know if the anti-cancer council’s cautions against sunbed use is based on the unhealthy effects of tanning per se, or if there’s something specially virulent about sunbed tanning.
What was interesting to me about this little scene was that the sunbed was on the way out without being forced out by government intervention. Awesome, as Jobby said. I was really happy too that the salon owner felt she could combine good business with not promoting the tan aesthetic. She had come from a quite fashionable salon in Toorak before this so I don’t think her position is a fringe view (sorry).
DD,
That might be true if customers were going to a solarium INSTEAD of tanning outdoors. I doubt it. My guess is they do both.
All honour to Clare Oliver for her courage and dignity, and to “7.30 Report” for a compassionate story.
I sense that getting a tan to be ‘attractive’ will be seen in a few years time as we now see women wearing corsets one hundred years or so.
Hear, hear, Ambigulous.
I’ve read there are a number of compounds that when taken orally produce a tan (Glucocorticosteroids being one example). The trick is making drugs without harmful side effects. Hopefully once they are commercialised the need for sunbathing, whether it be natural or artificial will quickly die out.
What a fantastic leap forward. I’m so relieved to hear that the grass roots movement has started before the legislation. I never understood the fascination of sunbeds anyway.
Me neither. They remind me of cheesy scifi cryogenic pods and so forth. I don’t really understand the appeal of tanning either, though. I’ve heard suggestions that having untanned skin makes you a figure of fun in some circles, suppose that might be true.
“They remind me of cheesy scifi cryogenic pods and so forth.”
YSTLIABT!!!
FDB: YSTLIABT ???
translated into Aussie English…? Or is it, comme les mots de Foucault, tres difficile to get a good translation?
Sorry, I was trying out a new kool-speak acronym.
You Say That Like It’s A Bad Thing
Ambigulous, I’m not sure what point you think you’re making with your frequent weird Franglais about Foucault, but for me it detracts rather than enhances whatever point it is that you think you’re making.
Hi all.
For DD and all others that don’t know what sunbeds do to you: the rays go 4 times as deep as of real sun, so not only is there a higher chance of cancer deeper than from sun, but the elastine in the skin breaks down on a 4 times deeper level. So, if you see those relatively young people with very loose and wrinkled skin, you can almost bet your butt that they have been (or were, as it never, ever repairs itself) regular solarium users.
Also, the solarium produces very high temperatures deeper in the skin, so it boils blood in the tiniest of capillaries, thats why you see people running around with broken capillaries on their faces. Sun can also do it, but why would you want to double your chances?
I know all this because I used to work in the industry, and you only have to have a client coming regularily for 2 years straight 3 times a week, to see their skin age 10 years over that time.
STAY OUT OF SOLARIUMS!