At a time when our newly crowned Australian of the Year attempts to use her platform to end the glamourisation of tanning, a dangerous social media trend encouraging sun baking has emerged.
A joint investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and A Current Affair has examined the marketing and claims made by three Australian-owned companies, Brunae Body, The Fox Tan and Melanoboost, spruiking tanning oils.
Called “tanning accelerators”, the oils are marketed at young women on social media and instruct users to bake out in the sun to soak up UV and also endorse using their products in solariums.
Cancer and skin experts are appalled and have slammed the companies profiting from products claimed to accelerate a tan through sun baking, a practice proven to accelerate skin ageing and increase the risk of skin cancer.
Instagram posts show young women, even teenagers, sun baking across one to three hours, documenting their deepening tans and advertising what world-leading skin cancer expert and Australian of the Year, Professor Georgina Long, calls a “health hazard”.
“Lying out in the sun in the middle of the day at the height of summer is just plain not good for you, it is a health hazard,” Long said.
It is your skin cells in trauma and it causes skin cancer.”
The companies have been known to spruik results with “minimal time in the sun”, oils that can “nourish and hydrate” the skin and ingredients that “help protect your skin from UV” and increase collagen.
“Pushing products onto people particularly our young, vulnerable people that glamorizes tanning is not healthy, it is like selling cigarettes or pushing alcohol,” Long said.
“Someone is diagnosed with melanoma every 30 minutes and someone dies from melanoma every six hours in this country.”
The tanning accelerators are meant to work by encouraging melanin production in the skin, producing a darker-than-normal tan when exposing the skin to the sun.
The companies glamourise sun exposure on their social media accounts, with reams of images of hatless girls lying out in the sun in swimsuits, boasting tans much darker than their natural skin colour, and using their products which contain no SPF.
While the companies websites and disclaimers often talk of sun safety and advise their users to wear sunscreen, their online presence often shows flagrant disregard for safe sun practices, promoting extreme tan lines.
