Tanorexia

This is the new word of the week in melanoma world, featured in an ABC News report on new medical research that indicates tanning is as addictive as drugs or alcohol. Personally, I’m a skeptic and cynically suspect this is just one more manifestation of a disturbing aspect of modern American culture: we tend to try to avoid taking personal responsibility for the bad consequences of stupid and self-destructive behavior by claiming that behavior was the product of some made-up “addiction”. (Anybody thinking about Tiger Woods here? I know I am.)

I played in another geezer golf match yesterday, held on a links-style course, and spent way too much time in or perilously near the course’s ubiquitous fairway bunkers. While I knew they were bad for my score, I just couldn’t seem to avoid the sand’s almost magnetic attraction. So hey, maybe I should just go with the flow and blame my mistakes on “sandorexia”, rather than a poor swing or club selection, and lobby the USGA to write a new official rule of golf that gives players afflicted with my addiction penalty stroke-free relief from the sand!

But regardless of whether tanorexia is for real or not, I’m grateful to ABC for increasing awareness of the dangers of tanning and providing me with material for another lyrical rant. Here's a new version of one of my favorites, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ “American Girl”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNgt7U9QrFQ


Well, she was an American girl
Braised in tanning beds
She couldn't help tannin'
Since there is a reason now to blame something else
After all it is a great new world
With new excuses for tans too
And if she couldn’t help tannin'
She had more tanning sessions she was gonna keep

O yeah, all right
Over easy, baby
You can’t help but fry
She was an American girl

Well she had found a mole last night,
She sat alone in oncology
Yeah, she could see her life roll by,
Blamin’ addiction for tans gotten on the beach
And for one desperate moment
Warnings crept back in her memory
God it's so painful when something that's the truth
Is still so damn hard to teach

O yeah, all right
Over easy, baby
You can’t help but fry
She was an American girl