Editorial: Fighting vanity with vanity

Cell phones, smoking, drinking, tanning, breathing, shower curtains. Supposedly just about… Cell phones, smoking, drinking, tanning, breathing, shower curtains. Supposedly just about everything causes cancer nowadays, but what are you willing to give up?

The Los Angeles Times reported on a recent study of 430 indoor tanners which showed that the threat of skin cancer did not deter people from “fake baking.” Indoor tanning remains especially popular among youth, with 10 percent of users under 15 years old and 25 to 40 percent older adolescent females.

Although cancer threats do not deter tanners, what did dissuade them was the threat of looking bad. Instead of focusing on the skin cancer risks of tanning, researchers provided information on the premature skin aging effects of ultraviolet radiation and on alternative ways to look good without tanning, such as exercise and sunless tanning products. Because most people tan to enhance their appearance, using an image-focused intervention seems promising.

In a society as vain as ours, it isn’t surprising that people would only respond to threats to their appearance and not to their health.

And it’s likely that because we hear the cancer threat so often, we’re simply no longer worried about it. If it seems like cancer is inevitable, why bother to quit other things like smoking? Unless, that is, you’re worried about the appearance of your teeth.

It seems important to note that all of the participants in the study were young women. Appearance-focused interventions might not be as effective on all other age groups or genders.