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Magazine beauty assistant Jeanette Morris was devastated when she was taken aside by her editors at Cosmopolitan one day and told that her habits needed to change.
Was she constantly late, treating her manager rudely or slacking off at the office?
No. As it turned out, if the junior writer wanted to remain in her job, she had to stop tanning.
“They said I was representing the brand, and that brand was all about safe sun,” says Morris, a former tanning addict who used indoor sun beds nearly every day for four years.
“If I didn’t practice what I preached, I would be shown the door.”
Instead of consulting an employment lawyer, the 22-year-old went cold turkey.
“It sucked, and I became this unhappy pale person,” says Morris, now 29, who felt “ugly and depressed” for months before beginning to accept her whiter self.
“A dark tan was part of my look.”
A healthy glow, it was not. At the time, the Manhattan-based writer thought she looked great. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, she recalls that her skin was “the shade of burnt toast that constantly smelled baked.”
This memory came back to haunt Morris recently with the publicity surrounding Patricia Krentcil, the so-called “tanning mom” from New Jersey whose leathery face now resembles beef jerky. In May, Krentcil, 44, was charged with taking her 5-year-old daughter inside a tanning booth. The case is still pending, but no fewer than 63 salons in her neighborhood announced she was no longer welcome to tan there.
Krentcil was blacklisted at a time when a growing number of users are turning their backs on indoor and spray tanning. The sensational case followed a Mayo Clinic study in April that showed a sixfold increase in melanoma diagnoses in young adults since the 1970s, the era when the year-round tanned look became more popular.
It might be beach season, but it seems that indoor tanning might have outlived its day in the sun.
Earlier this month, even the safety of spray tans was brought into question by investigators at ABC News: Leading dermatologists claimed that dihydroxyacetone, a chemical used in the process, could cause cancer if inhaled. Salon owners maintain they are taking precautions by providing eye goggles and face masks, but the industry is largely unregulated. Specific licenses are not needed for spray tanning, and health inspectors rarely check that rules are enforced.
In an effort to tamp down on the industry, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign a bill next month banning kids under the age of 16 from indoor tanning.
Even bronzing queen Snooki, from MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” has stopped tanning because she is pregnant. Her decision has become more common among moms-to-be, who are generally advised by doctors not to use tanning beds in case they overheat.
But for Morris, who blogs at beautysweetspot.com, these measures fall short. “I can’t believe tanning beds are still in existence,” she says.
“I honestly think my editors saved my life because they stopped me from using them all together.”
These days she’s an avid SPF 30 sunscreen user, no longer has spray tans and only applies sunless tanning creams at home.
“I get regular checkups with my dermatologist, and I’ve been lucky so far,” adds Morris.
Her story is all too familiar for stay-at-home mom Tara Cione, 34, of Massapequa, LI, who used tanning beds starting at the age of 15.
“I wanted to look the best I possibly could, so I kept getting sessions,” she says. “It was like drinking to cure a hangover. If my tan started to fade, I instantly topped it off.”
In preparation for her wedding in September 2002, Cione spent the entire summer inside a tanning bed. Now, she can’t bear to look at her wedding photos.
“I might as well be a carrot in a white dress,” she says. But the obsession didn’t stop with the wedding. Next, following the birth of her child, now 7, she bought an in-home tanning bed that she used practically every day. It was only after her godmother staged an intervention in 2007 — telling her she “looked orange” — that she began to acknowledge the problem.
“It felt like something to be ashamed of,” says Cione.
“It was like being an alcoholic or a chain smoker.”
Determined to show an example to her light-skinned daughter, she sold her $5,000 tanning bed back to the supplier for about $700.
“The fad is definitely over for me,” she says. “I look at my legs and my face and see sunspots all over the place. I know it’s because of tanning.”
It took a brush with death for Alison Irving of Northport, LI, to kick the habit. Her mother regrets signing a permission slip allowing the then 16-year-old to take 15 tanning sessions to get gussied up for a high school prom. Less than two years later, she was diagnosed with skin cancer.
“I just wanted to look good in my new white gown,” recalls Irving, who is now working to raise awareness for the American Cancer Society.
“But I ended up with something much more important to worry about.”
She developed basal cell carcinoma under her left eye and underwent chemosurgery and plastic surgery. Thankfully, the damage is not noticeable.
“It [the cancer] was the worst kind of wake-up call,” says Irving, now 22, who shies away from fake tanning because it reminds her too much of her ordeal.
Experiences like Irving’s bring a shudder to Fordham University student Maxxie Goldstein, 21, of the Upper West Side, who regularly used to use tanning beds with her friends. At one stage in high school, she had spray tans every other week, and slathered on Jergens cream every single night.
“I called it ‘Jergens-ing,’ ” says Goldstein, who says she used to look like an oompa loompa, with orange on her palms and in the creases of her joints. “It became part of my routine. I would [go to swimming] practice, have dinner, shower, then do my Jergens-ing.”
Her Jergens addiction was eventually cured after she noticed orangey brown streaks on her body whenever she got out of the pool. Then, in the fall of 2010, she started interning at the Westchester-based natural beauty company G2 Organics, which sells sulfate-free products in stores such as Bergdorf Goodman. She says former model Cherie Corso, the founder of G2 Organics, lectured her on the dangers of chemicals and highlighted the natural alternatives to regular cosmetics.
“You really have to worry about the ingredients in regular tanning products,” warns Goldstein.
“There needs to be more research because people aren’t thinking enough about the chemicals being absorbed into their pores. I still have a lot more years [to go] in my life, and I’m no longer willing to take any risks.”