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The real challenge is combatting the adolescent culture that currently encourages compulsive tanning. In some circles--Kennedy's cheerleading squad, for instance--a year-round tan is becoming part of the uniform. "All the girls who are really tanned all through the year--they're the popular girls," Hendershot says. Images of perpetually bronzed pop icons such as Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson reinforce a tan's value. So do members of the opposite sex. "Guys are always complimenting girls on their tans," Hendershot notes. And some are joining the tanning-bed trend themselves, she confides. "Their girlfriends make them go," she says, although "no guys admit it."
"We're fighting a Darwinian struggle here," says Dr. Sandra Read, a dermatologist in Washington and member of the National Council on Skin Cancer Prevention. "We're hardwired to look at color-- vividness--as a sign of health and attractiveness and a potential good partner to mate with." A knowledge of the risks can hardly compete with that kind of programming. Like many teens, Kennedy shrugs off the in-the-distance downsides: "It may make my skin wrinkle a little bit earlier, but I'm going to look good while I can."
The analogy to a teenager's fatal attraction to smoking has not been lost on the medical community. Doctors point out new evidence that tanning, whether indoor or out, may be somewhat addictive. Small-scale studies by researchers at North Carolina's Wake Forest University indicate that tanning may trigger endorphins, which could be why sunbathing feels so relaxing and why frequent tanners experience withdrawal-like symptoms if they don't get their regular fix. So public-health officials and consumer advocates are taking lessons from the antismoking movement. Not only are they pushing for laws to curb young people's access to salons, but some have gone so far as to suggest raising taxes at the tanning booth. Lawsuits against the industry are also part of the strategy. In June, the first class action for indoor-tanning consumer fraud was filed against Hollywood Tanning Systems, in Mount Laurel, N.J., which operates one of the largest tanning chains in the U.S. The suit accuses the company of promoting UV lamps as a healthy alternative to outdoor tanning, likening a "safe" tan to a "safe" cigarette.
The tanning industry defends itself by insisting that it's better for tanners to control their UV exposure with a timer in a salon than to sunbathe amid solar-radiation levels that vary not only from day to day but from hour to hour. Industry defenders also point out that dermatologists prescribe indoor tanning--to treat such conditions as psoriasis. "To suggest that there is no safe alternative to outdoor tanning--or that any tanning is bad for you--is ridiculous," says Hollywood Tanning chairman Ralph Venuto. The bottom line, says John Overstreet, executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association, is that "everyone agrees that what you need to avoid is being burned."
But dermatologists say any change in skin color, whether a golden tan or a beet-red sunburn, is a sign of UV damage. So much for the idea that a base tan is a form of protection, says Drusilla Hufford, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's stratospheric-protection division: "You are still very, very vulnerable."