there is nothing attractive about orange skin, it just makes you look like an Oompa Loompa. There's nothing WRONG with pale skin!

I like the clip. It's useful to hear the results of studies placed next to each other like that.

I do notice, however, that all the measures she suggests at the end are individual changes, not institutional ... which seems to put the responsibility for change squarely on individual women, and implies that the responsibility for the current state of things is also on women.

In other words, I read the implication that if women just weren't so manipulable and self-centered, we wouldn't have this problem. But that's my interpretation of a couple of sentences at the end of the clip.

And I do suspect that this is a useful place to start for many women. I know a few who would react better to the suggestion that they go to a museum rather than get waxed, than they would to a suggestion to rally for institutional change.

I have no doubts the same results would apply to men and beauty, especially if you change 'beauty' to 'sex'. People think they rather be beautiful and have a lot of sex than be healthy. Actually, if you think about it, it does make sense.

This is an interesting situation, from a socio-economic point of view. Patriarchy, and corporations, benefit greatly from keeping women sick. It keeps us docile--distracts us from being able to speak out against sexism (and/or any other -isms that may apply to a person). And there is also great profit to be made in keeping women sick. Why do you think it's the Komen Race for the Cure and not the Race for Prevention?

And furthermore, the idea that the real danger is ugliness, not cancer, is predicated on the cult of youth. Who benefits from that? Makeup and skincare (read: pharmaceutical again) corporations, as women buy smear more and more organic pheasant paste on our faces to prevent "premature aging." And if we're busy caring so much about preventing "premature aging" (or even aging at all!), we don't have time to speak out against sexism etc. Plus it makes life much, more difficult as older women are *forced* to adopt cultural facades of youth in order to stay in the labor force. Less competition for men.

So in other words: the same people benefit if women go tanning, and if women don't go tanning, and those people are largely male.

Here's one to chew on:

My GF went to a conservative Catholic school in New Orleans, Louisiana which practiced segregation (the colored kids sat in the back of the class in the distant past of the early 1990's), and where they first question she was asked by another student on campus was, "Are you a nigger?"

These same girls grew up tormenting my GF for being mixed race. Eventually, they started going to tanning beds. Now, these same girls made themselves DARKER than my GF, and continued to refer to her by very unflattering racial slurs.

These girls are now New Orleans high society, probably with kids themselves.

This is sad. Her recommendations are the same things I heard 40 years ago. I've tried to follow some of them, but the rest of the world (including a lot of women) aren't listening.

"isn't listening."

"Seems that if you want to discourage women women from using tanning beds, don’t warn them about skin cancer. Just tell them it’ll make them ugly."

This seems like common sense to me. The vast majority of tanning-bed users are not doing it for their health. The segment of the population that uses them is already self-selected for prioritizing the pursuit of a beauty ideal over other uses of their time and money. Women who are concerned about skin cancer, or who don't feel that a tan is worth considerable expense and hours in a coffin, have already been ruled out by the fact that they aren't indoor tanners and thus don't need to be "discouraged" from the practice.

With that in mind, if you want to persuade someone to change a behavior, why on earth wouldn't you focus on the reason they began that behavior in the first place?

As for the question of why people pursue beauty ideals, let's not pretend that we live in a perfectly egalitarian society. Privilege, power, access to sexual fulfillment, and wealth are distributed extremely unevenly, and many of the disadvantages an individual might have are immutable. Beauty, on the other hand, seems to provide some leverage against other disadvantages, and it is far easier to decorate our bodies to become more attractive than to change our gender, race, or class to the more advantaged one.

And zooming out even farther, it's not terribly unusual for people to risk long-term health damage in order to achieve short-term gain or pleasure. People smoke, drink, endure air pollution, eat fatty foods, forgo exercise, drive cars, and have sex, knowing full well that all of these practices bear more risk of illness and fatality than not doing them. What kind of a rock would you have to live under to think that the socioeconomic benefit of "beauty" (albeit of the crispy orange variety) isn't at least as compelling to rational individuals as that of the (far more life-threatening) nicotine fix?

Oh yeah...apparently a rock with lots of "books, museums, and charitable organizations" on top of it. In some magical society where one's place in the social hierarchy is determined by the size of her check to Haiti. Right.

I've seen a similar study about smoking. Apparently being told smoking will kill you is less of a disincentive than smoking making you unpopular.

This seems like it could well be just a standard case of cognitive bias: it's very hard for most people to honestly picture themselves getting skin cancer and dying, and very easy for most people to imagine themselves being unattractive. Therefore, in their decision-making, they will be more influenced by the possibility of being unattractive, since it seems like a more 'real' consequence, despite the fact that death from skin cancer should objectively be weighed much higher.

This is funny, the bottom ads by google say...Sexy Hot Filipino Women AND, Date Indonesian women. LOL!

As a couple of commenters have noted, this makes sense, given why people tan, and it is not a new finding in the world of public health messaging. Telling people that their behaviors are unhealthy and will make them sick, be it smoking, overeating, inactivity or anything, does not make for effective public health interventions, particularly when negative health outcomes are years down the road.

Telling people that their behaviors will impact their social status does work, for smoking and other health behaviors. Public health campaigns that take this tack are most effective. I don't think its disheartening. I see critiques about this coming from a perspective in which being a "real feminist" means not caring about your looks or what people think about you. I know women's physical appearance can trump our other accomplishments in overt and not so obvious ways. Its a serious problem. However, in the case of public health intervention, the data is clear that all people are all concerned and convinced to change their health behaviors by very different motivations than what liberal white professional feminists and other elite thinkers approve of. Most people in most societies are concerned with their immediate ability to integrate into social networks, get resources, and be respected. That's why we tan. If tanning doesn't get us that, then we might not tan.

Great post - what an amazing artist!

http://preetispurpose.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/crafting-a-gender-inclusive-world/

I think that pale skin, especially if it looks almost translucent and shows blue veins, is EXTREMELY beautiful. But I don't count, since I'm a goth...

the movie The Ugly Truth is an interesting movie and i really love Katherine Heigl ~

I have beautiful ivory skin and recognise the danger of going out in the sun for too long or spending time on a tanning bed - I have never been able to get a tan, and have come to appreciate the colour of my skin as both a marker of my Scandinavian ancestry and a statement against modern consumer culture which leads women into early graves through promoting the attainment of unnatural skin tones. Skin colour is genetically determined and if your ancestors lived in the snowy wastes, then your risk of skin cancer will likely be high. I don't know why we can't just accept and celebrate different appearances - I personally think that the "ideal" of a tanned, thin, blonde woman is quite unattractive. Also, I think that darker skin shades are beautiful and women in countries like Africa and India are sadly pressured by the media into bleaching their lovely chocolate skin with abrasive creams in the name of "beauty". Does anyone else think that it may be a modern-day, socially accepted form of misogyny that we are expected to look perfect at all times and achieve highly in other areas- something that is never foisted upon men as invasively as it is upon women?
As a woman who, apart from being pale, conforms quite closely to the "accepted" Western view of beauty by simple luck of the genetic draw, I have experienced first-hand the difficulties involved. I strongly resent being treated as an object and I am sick of seeing surprise register on people's faces when I tell them that I have a Ph.D in psychology. Also, I find it sickening that the highest compliment you can give a girl or woman is "you're so pretty". Never mind the fact that she may be an athlete, a brilliant student, a hard-working mother - all that counts is that she is "pretty". And if that athlete or student or mother is not "pretty", then there is no other adjective we can use for her that will give her the same level of status.
The biggest problem is that in this society, a woman's success largely rests on her appearance. It is especially concerning that womens' magazines offer endless diets and advertisements for makeup, and tips on how to please men, when really it would be much better if they expanded womens' horizons by feeding their (bored) minds. I could go on forever about this, I really could.