'When I saw those images glamorising sun tanning, I shook with tears. Here's the scary truth.'

Last week, my attention was drawn to fashion designer Christopher Esber’s Instagram page for all the wrong reasons.

In January, the fashion brand posted images of its newest swim collection. There, posted in tidy carousels, I saw something that made me sick to my stomach. The images depicted a model clad in swimming costumes sporting tan lines so deep, so obvious, so on display that there was no missing them. 

As I swiped through them, I started crying. Big tears. The kind you cry because you’re suddenly in shock and feeling all the things: powerless, hopeless, sad and so, so incredibly angry.

Earlier that day, the world found out that Natalie Fornasier had died of melanoma. You’ll know Natalie as a sun safety and disability advocate, gorgeous writer and all-around brilliant person. I know her as the woman who changed my whole life when I met her five years ago. 

So it was with fresh grief coursing through my veins that I shared two of those images to my Instagram Stories. 

I wrote over one of them:

“I will admit that this has got me on the wrong day but I am shaking right now. How is this happening AGAIN. Brands who do this, let me be clear – you are complicit in promoting sun tanning culture and the melanoma and skin cancer deaths it DIRECTLY causes. The costumes were already beautiful, the creative didn’t need to involve dangerous messaging.”

Watch: How to protect your skin from the sun. Post continues below.

I tagged the brand because I wanted them to read what I had written. I needed them to understand I wasn’t just a wild internet warrior trying to drag them for posting something contentious. Because this sh*t matters to me. It matters a lot.

I’ve spent a lot of my time campaigning for melanoma awareness, much of it alongside Natalie through Call Time On Melanoma. 

Over the years, I’ve read hundreds of Instagram DMs from people who have or have had skin cancer. Perfect strangers have shared with me the devastation of their diagnoses and the difficulties of processing an excision or amputation. There have been stories of seemingly endless immunotherapy, of the grief of finding out that treatment hasn’t worked, of the despair of a recurrence.

Unfortunately, because of the aggressive nature of melanoma, there have been fewer joyful recovery updates. Every single one of those messages has affected me deeply. 

Natalie, most of all, allowed me to see the true reality of living with a melanoma diagnosis. She shared her most vulnerable lived experiences with so many of us, and worked tirelessly for change.

So seeing those Christopher Esber images, clearly positioning tan lines as fashionable, set me off. For a fashion brand to be putting that on social media in 2023? It feels like we’re going backwards.

Image from Christopher Esber's Resort 23 Swimwear collection. The campaign has now been removed from the brand's channels, "effective immediately". Picture: Instagram.

This piece isn’t really about Christopher Esber. Yes, the campaign images the brand posted were particularly egregious examples of how sun tanning is promoted in our culture. But after being called to account, they removed them and addressed their actions. 

In a News.com.au interview, a spokesperson said: “The nature of the campaign images shared has negatively impacted our customers with the messaging it conveys. We understand the severity of what the images represent and do not condone the glamorisation of tanning, or the promotion of sun tanning. We have removed the images off all platforms effective immediately and take full responsibility for this creative choice.”

This is a step in the right direction, but Christopher Esber is far from the only brand that has showcased tan lines in a way meant to convey attractiveness and desirability.

In our culture, the belief that tanning is cool is reinforced often. A few recent examples: the ‘sunscreen contouring’ trend that encouraged applying sunscreen in ways that left strategic tan lines on the face in lieu of makeup contour, and the TikTok #sunburnchallenge, where creators posted themselves online with extreme sunburns. 

@stopiteli

Pseudo sunscreen contour results ☀️

♬ original sound - Eli Withrow

@danyellenoble I need my tanning time #ReadyForHell #MINDORDERING #fyp #foryou #relatable #funnyvideos #uvindex #suntanning #datinglife #singlelife ♬ original sound - AnxietyGangOfficial

@sophielucaas old people are cute tho #fyp ♬ mood - Trevor

Late last year, the platform promised to pull all content mentioning this and related hashtags at the urging of the Melanoma Institute, but so far it doesn’t seem to have been actioned. Then there are the endless depictions in movies, magazines, and on TV.

Even worse is the content created by and for the brands whose business it is, quite literally, to platform tanning because they make tanning products. 

The aggressive marketing of tanning oils and accelerators to young people (sometimes actual children) online contributes to the demand for these products. And these companies should be held to account for profiting from products that promote a practice – sun tanning – that causes the exact kind of skin damage that leads to skin cancer.

Listen: The retro trend of sunbaking is on the rise across social media. Have new regulations wound back the clock on sun safety? Hear the discussion on this episode of Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues below.

The TGA may have inadvertently contributed to the sheer amount of pro-tanning content we’re seeing online lately with their update to the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code last year. 

The Code states that businesses cannot engage influencers to offer testimonials of sunscreen as part of a gifted or paid exchange. Intended to quell misinformation (the guidelines reach across other TGA-listed products like gym supplements and vitamins too), it has left a sunscreen-shaped hole on social media. 

While the TGA only deals with therapeutic goods (tanning oils aren’t therapeutic goods, so they don’t fall under their purview), it still feels like a lack of foresight for us to have ended up in this situation. 

We’re living in a world where creators are banned from promoting sunscreens via informed first-person reviews (the kind viewers find helpful) but not tanning oils.

We urgently need to have a new conversation about sun tanning. The conversation around the practicalities of sun safety has been happening for decades, of course. And in the past five years, we’ve seen a substantial shift towards promoting sun safety. 

But now it’s time to address sun tanning culture specifically. We need to explicitly say that it is dangerous and that it directly contributes to skin cancer and melanoma diagnoses and deaths. That link needs to be solid for us to collectively challenge pro-tanning influencers and brands, which is what’s necessary if we want real change.

There’s one thing I know for certain: sun tanning kills. Let’s leave it behind once and for all.

To sign the petition to ban tanning product advertising in Australia, please head here.

For more from Lisa Patulny, follow her on Instagram.

Feature image: Instagram/Christopher Esber; TikTok/carrotenau