The unexpected price of vanity

Desiring a fast tan so badly that you'll expose your skin to concentrated artificial sunlight is the epitome of vanity. Paying for artificial sunlight when the real thing is just out doors is ridiculous.

As if there weren't enough reasons to not jump into a tanning bed, we hear about this...

'Her Body Was Swollen' SkyNews
Updated: 12:20, Wednesday May 03, 2006
A faulty sunbed shocked a woman unconscious and left her with 65% burns, a court has heard.
Melanie Wraith, 35, suffered an electric shock when the canopy of a machine she was using collapsed.
She lost consciousness but woke up more than two-and-a-half hours later and raised the alarm.
Ms Wraith, from Leek, Staffordshire, stopped breathing and had to be revived in the ambulance, as she was taken to hospital.
She was later transferred to a specialist burns unit in Birmingham, where she remained for two days.

Let's see, you get an electric shock so powerful it knocks you out, then the very heavy lid to the box you're in falls on you, and you get 15 times the recommended maximum (probably life threatening) dose of artificial sunlight, and for what, like 20 euros and so you can impress all your pasty, anemic British friends? Yeah....that was worth it.

She was unconscious for two and a half hours. Was that with the tan lights on? She must have looked like an old shoe coming out of there. There's no way she doesn't eventually develop melanoma from that acute exposure. I don't know what the conversion rate is but if 12 minutes gets you noticeably darker in the tanning bed, then 2 and a half hours in the bed must be like 15 hours in the sun or something...yikes!

I realize that they're in England where it rains all the time and is rarely sunny enough to get a tan but everybody else is pale and bloodless too so why not just be content with her normal ashen, sickly, unpigmented skin?

She'll not doubt receive a substantial and deserved settlement from the tanning bed manufacturer but ironically she'll be so suitcase-unattractive from the excessive tan that nobody will want to date her and help her spend it.