My Purpose

My purpose for writing about this social issue is because it is something that I have suffered through my whole life. I want to show my audience that it is not just some hobby or stupid thing girls like to do. Most of us are sucked into this because of the media and magazines that portray these images. We as human beings especially in American society like to be a part of things. We envy those who are popular when we are younger, high school, and even when we are older. We see the constant images of movie stars on television and in theatres and want to be them. Most of the times they are made up to look so perfect. We as just normal people who do not live the luxuries they have look up to them as role models and someone we want to become. This addiction to tanning is becoming worse, and it is sometimes unavoidable. It is almost like a drug now, and there are even medical people out looking for these implications. They are starting to find things that occur in our brain because of tanning. People have suffered from withdraws when they are not in a tanning bed or in the sun. We as humans have problems sometimes, and they are unavoidable. Just as people become addicted to alcohol or drugs or smoking the sun is very similar. It is doing something to our brains. It is causing us to want more and more of it. The problem here though is that there is a stereotype that we just do this for fun. We don’t care that we might have skin cancer one day, and we are acting in a stupid manner. The truth is most of us can’t help it. People are always looking down on others and we always want to better ourselves. If the media is showing that the best of the best are tan, then that is what we want to be. Most people don’t want to be white, because that is not what is “popular” right now. And the fact that it has even been proven medically that the UV rays are addictive makes it even more contradictory to the stereotype. We can’t help it! Maybe if the media were to change its view on skin tone then we wouldn’t need this craving of sunlight so often. In history people use to want to be as light of skin tone as possible. They would proceed to use leeches on their skin to suck out the blood to make them look pale. So even then people were subjected to ideas of what looked good or appropriate. Today it is to be tan. Therefore, every movie we see, every TV show, commercial, magazine, ad in the mall is trying to get us to join in on the tanning party. They advertise all kinds of make ups to make us darker and sprays and deals for tanning salons. It is always there trying to suck us in and we can’t avoid it.