Okay - this blog is about nail polish and spraytanning. Pretty trivial things, as far as life goes. And even though both are my livelihood, I try to keep a sense of humour and perspective about the importance of just where these things should sit in the big scheme of things.
....And so far as spraytanning goes, it's just soo much fun dishing it out to our hapless famous lovelies that, despite all the privilege, insider knowledge, money and connections can never seem to quite get it right. But let me tell you, the unrelenting and lop-sided criticism and focus (my own involvement included) on the dodgy side of fake tanning does tend to wreck havoc on the reputation of spraytanning, and therefore my business.
Which brings me to this week, when I was literally stunned by two complete extremes in the area of media/celebrity influence on the subject of tanning, and by association, the very, very real and responsible option of spraytanning.
In Australia (as I lightheartedly touched on in a much earlier post), we are absolutely bombarded and pummelled with all the facts, defense strategies and shock-tactic media from a delicate age about the seriousness, dangers and (distressingly common) fatality of UV exposure and skin cancers. In all of this information, I've never been so affected as I was last night.
When I saw the latest national SunSmart commercial on free-to-air television last night, I could not ignore the urge to post about it - especially in light of part of an interview I also read this week with Katy Price in which she expressed that she was fed up with fake tan and her solution to this problem was not to fade to pale (unlike this Sydney journalist...
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/contributors/farewell-the-tandoori-tan-20100118-mep6.html ), but to start going back to sunbeds.
It really is NO fun being at the end of the finger-pointing and cackling about a spraytan mishap and Katy Price is absolutely allowed to do whatever she likes with her own body and skin cells. My point is not to demonise her. But, I wonder if she seriously comprehends that because of her position in our celebrity/fame/media obsessed world (although, yes... many people do giggle at her - but, however idiotically misguided...) there are also young people being influenced by her stance on these things and will copying accordingly.
I understand 'sunsmart' education could almost be non-existent outside of Australia, but it's frightening to read that Price seems to think you can hedge your bets with cancer and believes because she doesn't smoke, she is in some kind of credit when it comes to developing the deadly disease, so she can afford the UV exposure (ummmm, last I checked lungs and skin are two completely different organs... anyway!).
Even in the U.S., where 'melonoma' is still a truely exotic, enigmatic term, they are beginning to seriously grasp the horror of skin cancer, with Congress mightily trying to push a new tax law through that targets tanning salons, inparticular sun-bed users.
Links to the full Katy Price articles...
This one of the more comprehensive Australian sites about the dangers of UV exposure and they are also the orchestrators of this latest ad campaign.
ANYONE that thinks it's okay to expose their skin to the sun or sunbeds, needs to watch this commercial first. It is realistically terrifying.
I will now get off my soapbox and back into my spraybooth.... (tandoori-spice rub 'n all...)
