MINI: Why the TikTok tan-line trend is SO dangerous

Published Jan 13, 2025, 8:11 AM

Young people on TikTok are intentionally burning themselves in the sun to get tan lines, then showing them off and we have THOUGHTS about it. 

Hey, I want to take a little bit more of a serious turn. Now. I am not believe it or not a TikToker. I'm not in that world. I don't love TikTok. I can ruse it very occasionally.

You started an account and I think you posted one thing and then never came back.

I started an account too old. Yeah. Someone was like, you need to keep up with the trends, and I was like, I don't want to anyway. Speaking of trends, there is a trend on TikTok at the moment where these gen zs are trying to bring back and make it cool, cool and attractive and sexy to have tan lines like they are. They are actively going out into the burning sun to get a tan line from like swimmers, like a triangle mark for example, for the women, so that when they wear their clothes you can see that they've got these huge like the white triangle and then basically like burnt hand skin.

I just feel like for all of the efforts that has has been done to try and change people's perceptions around tanning, I don't understand how you could do a one eighty on this, Like the whole slip stop slap thing how that's gone out the window.

But before we get into the dane of actually what having a tan means, it's dumb. It doesn't look good. I don't understand. Like, like we have gone over the years, we used to do the opposite, right, if you had a tan, you'd be like, damn it, look at this tan line. I need to try and cover it uniform. And now it's changed to be sexy. It doesn't look good. If anyone's in the car right now thinking that a tan line looks hot, it doesn't.

I also don't know. I don't know if this is just jen z. It's like I know that this is taking of TikTok. I've seen it as well. But I do sometimes feel like I don't want to be the ageist in here. That's like it's that generation.

We are nearly forty.

But yeah, But also it's when you think about the stats when it comes to skin cancer, and like specifically here in Australia, it is really really scary stuff. So two out of every three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer. One Australian dies from melanoma every six hours. Like when you think about the prevalence of it. It's crazy to me that this could ever make a comeback. And I think about when I was young, in our family and in our household as kids, sun's safety was just not a thing. Like my mum would be like, I've got a pimple, go out and get some sun on it. Clear your skin right up. I got burnt so much as a kid, and now I'm paying for it. The amount of lasers, the amount of like different creams and things that I've tried to use to get rid of the pigmentation that I have. Even I have pigmentation all over my arm, which I would say daily. I have people message me on Instagram being like, why have you got bruises all over yourself? But actually it's sun damage. And it has totally changed the way that I parent in comparison to how I was parented. It like, my kids are five and three and they have never ever been sunburned, and I think that it's so that's so achievable. But when I was a kid, I used to think like it's just crazy, Like everyone gets sunburn, it's normal.

I put sun cream. Now now that I know the stats around Australia, I put sun cream on my dog's nose.

I know I do the same.

Also, it's sort of like counterintuitive, right when you think of the youngsters, the young'ins that are so proactive in their appearance in terms of wanting to look good and they're anti aging, but then they say, hey, let's get a turn line. The quickest way to age and to show aging is from the sun. So it sort of goes against each other.

There's so much information about that now, Like I mean, it's not like that that's a new piece of you know, info is that the more sun exposure and sun damage you have, the worse it's going to be for your skin in the long run. But the thing is, I think that when and you remember what it was like, you don't think about the long term, right, You don't think about what is that going to do to you when you're forty or fifty or sixty. And I look at my skin now and I just think, God, I wish I had done it differently when I was younger. And every time I'm at the beach and I'm putting sunscreen on my kids and they're like, man a bit, I'm like, you will when you are at nineteen, when you are thirty five, You're going to thank me for this.

That's my point, Laura. This generation do think that they're using, like seventeen eighteen, nineteen year olds are wanting to use active skincare, all of the top makeup, they're getting botox at that age, like they care a lot about what they look like compared to our generation because of things like social media. So then it just seems so backwards for me to be like, Hey, I'm twenty and I'm going to pay for all this money to make myself look young, but I'm gonna go and burn my skin to get the tan line, which is going to age me. Like it just for me is silly. So I just think anyone listening right now that thinks this is cool, you will probably most likely stats wise, get skin cancer from that. So he's doing everything you want. Especially in Australia, we have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.

Yeah, I mean, it's a really, really scary statistic. The good thing though, is that trends don't last long. Remember the planking trend. I still blank, you don't you idiot? Or like, speaking of kids, I did something very stupid. My daughter she's just started well, she's just had a vacation care for school, and I it's good to be a kid these days, aren't you got a vacation every day. Well, it's like it's like before schoolcare, arfter school care, vacation care. And I got a call from the teachers because I am doing a really bad job of this parenting thing.

So it would seem, oh, here we go.

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