Before the 1920s, a suntan marked you as someone who laboured outdoors
A century ago in Europe and America, tanned skin signalled a labourer, and even beachgoers hid under parasols and long sleeves. Then Coco Chanel came home from the Riviera accidentally sunburnt, Paris adored the singer Josephine Baker, and within a few years a bronzed complexion meant leisure, health and luxury.
Sunlight had already been rebranded as medicine. Niels Finsen won the 1903 Nobel Prize for a light therapy that treated lupus vulgaris and rickets, and doctors learned that sunshine lets skin make vitamin D, whose lack causes rickets. A 1910 expedition to Tenerife tested the wider benefits of heliotherapy, and by the late 1920s sunlight was prescribed for everything from fatigue to tuberculosis. Jean Patou launched the first suntan oil, Huile de Chaldée, in 1927.
Marketing followed. Magazines promoted sunbathing in the 1940s, the bikini appeared in 1946, and in 1953 Coppertone ran its famous drawing of a cocker spaniel tugging down a girl's swimsuit to reveal a tan line. Sunscreens began carrying SPF ratings in 1962, tanning beds arrived in 1978, and Mattel's Malibu Barbie spread the look to a new generation. By 2007 indoor tanning was a five-billion-dollar business in the United States. Tastes still differ elsewhere: in parts of China, where pale skin retains prestige, beachgoers were wearing ski masks as recently as 2012.
Biologically, a tan is two different reactions. UVA light quickly darkens melanin already in the skin by oxidising it, which changes colour without adding much protection. UVB does direct damage to DNA, and the body responds by making new melanin, a delayed tan that shows up two or three days later and lasts weeks. That deeper tan offers only a modest protection factor of around 3.
Health bodies including the World Health Organization have issued warnings about tanning, and a 2010 study found frequent tanning bed use tripled melanoma risk. UV exposure also prompts skin cells to release beta-endorphins, natural opioids, which may explain why some habitual tanners meet clinical criteria for addiction.
Source: Sun tanning
