Tanning is back

0:00Support for Today Explained comes from Fetch. Fetch is pet insurance, if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over$1 ,000, and it almost never comes at a convenient time. So check out Fetch. You get paid up to 90 % of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. Every vet is in network. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon, and I'm here at the office checking out the Shake It Out shorts.

0:43These have been my go-tos, and I kind of think of them as a middle ground between a true run short and a more playful, athletic, sporty short. They have all the performance you want for running, so a comfy liner, our lightweight Swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like is the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun, so they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake It Out shorts in-store now or online at lululemon.com. When I was a teenager, we went to the Bahamas. We didn't realize how intense the sun was down there.

1:17I'm at the beach with my friends. I don't put on any sunscreen.

1:24Jonquilyn Hill:I'm John Gwynn Hill. This is Explain It to Me from Vox.

1:31Jonquilyn Hill:The other day, producer Kelly Wessinger and I headed up to the roof of my apartment building to take part in a time-honored summer tradition, hanging out poolside. And Kelly came dressed to impress. I'm wearing a rash guard. It's long sleeve and high neck. Turtleneck in the summertime. I'm also wearing shorts. There is a bathing suit underneath this. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. None of these clothes are coming off. And I'm wearing sunscreen underneath all of this, too. Before I put the rash guard on, there's 50 base layer. Kelly has a contentious relationship with the sun. I am very pale, so I wear like 70 on my face every day.

2:15and then...

2:16Jonquilyn Hill:Oh, you wear 70 on your face? Yeah. I won't lie to you, JQ. I've used 100. I've used 100 before, yeah. I am not pale by any means. And I tend to play it a little more fast and loose. JQ, just in contrast to me, can you walk us through what you are wearing at the pool? Oh, yeah. I have on a pair of sandals and an anklet and a bikini and my 40 SPF, of course. Yes. She looks like a normal person at the pool.

2:49Jonquilyn Hill:Both Kelly and I, we've gotten burned before. And the thing about a bad sunburn is, you don't forget it. I felt this burn coming from the inside of my body. It felt like it was inside of my skin, not even on top of it. I went and Googled it. I looked on Reddit. And apparently, you can get a sunburn so bad that it is called hell's itch. I applied sunscreen everywhere but the tops of my feet. And I burned the tops of my feet so bad, I couldn't put socks on for two or three days. I'm black, and so I figured I never burn, I'm not going to burn. It was horrible. Completely deep fried. My face had blown up like a big red cherry tomato.

3:36Jonquilyn Hill:And that burn can stay with you. Skin cancer is the most common kind of cancer. And your chances of having melanoma double if you've been sunburned five times. All of that should make sunscreen a no-brainer, right? Well, maybe not. According to Elle Beauty editor Katie Barone, summer 2026 is actually all about getting as much sun as possible. So like a lot of trends these days, it really has taken hold on TikTok. especially with the younger audience gen z in particular and i hate to be a millennial that's like gen z is doing this but it's true gen z is tanning a lot um and on tiktok the way that we kind of see that manifesting is that people are doing this thing they call tan maxing which is like looks maxing but for tanning okay these are my tanning non-negotiables as somebody who literally treats tanning like it's a sport.

4:41Seeing how long I can last tanning in 103 degree weather in UV 12. So as you can see, I'm like mostly burnt. But once it like fades, it'll become chocolate, you know?

4:52Jonquilyn Hill:Listener, she is not chocolate. So you're trying to tan as much as possible in like the most optimized way, which means they will look at the UV index and see where the sun is higher. And that's when they'll go outside when UV is like 10, which, you know, if you're concerned about the sun, that's like the last time that you want to be outside. And then there are also a lot of people that are using these tan accelerator products. Okay, I'm using my favorite tanning oil from Carotene. And I'm going to see how dark I can get. I've been using this for over a year. It is intensive tanning gel and it has carrot and coconut oil in it.

5:33which typically have carrot seed oil in them, which is supposed to accelerate how fast your skin tans because it has a lot of vitamin A, which is supposed to help you get tanner faster. So I was just on a family vacation, and one of the people that was with us was Gen Z, 23 years old. She had one of these carrot tan accelerators with her. She was checking the UV index. I was like, oh, my God, it's like TikTok is coming to life in front of me. And, you know, I was really seeing it happen in real time.

6:11Jonquilyn Hill:Is it that people don't know the risks or do they just not care about the risks? I think that people are aware of the risks. I, you know, I think that we're seeing that with Gen Z and younger people quite a bit, just the way the world is. I think that there is this certain degree of nihilism of like, oh, well, the world is bad anyway. Why wouldn't I just also get a tan? And I also think that to a certain extent, you know, and I don't know how many people would say that they're necessarily inspired by the Trump administration or something like that. But we do see in the culture right now kind of this turn against medicine and vaccines and trust in science.

7:00And I do think there are people online that are taking that and also saying that they don't trust sunscreen. they think that chemicals in sunscreen are bad for you. Stop using sunscreen, okay? The sunscreen chemicals seep into your bloodstream after just one day. I'm a big believer in not wearing sunscreen because I think it causes cancer. Sunscreen with like crazy chemicals in it. As soon as that was approved, also a spike in melanoma happened. There's kind of this pervasive idea that sunscreen might be just as bad for you as the sun. In which case, why wouldn't you also have a tan?

7:39Jonquilyn Hill:And of course, RFK Jr., the head of Health and Human Services, is well known for tanning, right? He is a proponent of getting in a tanning bed. And that is, you know, why he has the skin tone that he has and kind of the leatheriness to his skin. What's the aesthetic people are going for? Like, what is the look of the moment that tanning is part of? Yeah, I mean, I think to a certain extent, wanting to be tan has never gone away. There's like one commonality between a WWE wrestler and a bride, and it's a spray tan. And that has been the case for a long time. it's kind of like an event ready thing like you know you want to look tan and for some reason people think that when they're tan they look their best and obviously you can go get a spray tan but I think you know there are plenty of reasons people don't necessarily want to do that it costs money it smells it's messy it is a really great alternative to being in the sun if you do want to be tan, but I think that people are kind of like, well, why would I do that when I could just go and get the real thing in the sun?

8:54Jonquilyn Hill:So if the Secretary of Health and Human Services is super into tanning, is that normalizing this idea that tanning is actually healthy when really it's not? I mean, I do think that there are a lot of people who think that the sun has benefits for them. And there's, you know, all these people who are like, oh, if I just go in the sun, it'll fix my eczema. Or I know that people think that that's the best way to get vitamin D. And like, I do think that there is this idea that the sun can be really healthy for you. And I think that people think that they look healthier when they have a tan. Like when I first started working on this story, I went on my, because I'm a beauty editor.

9:38So a lot of my followers are people in the beauty space and I went on my Instagram and I asked like anonymously if you like tanning let me know why and like so many people so many like beauty industry insiders makeup artists editors all these people were like don't tell anyone but I love tanning because I just think it makes me look like healthy and beautiful and like a lot of people were even like I don't tan my face but I tan my body because I think I just like look better, healthier, stronger when I have a tan. So I think that it's twofold. I think that people think that the sun is good for them.

10:13And I think that they think a tan makes them look healthier.

10:23Jonquilyn Hill:People have been chasing the sun in pursuit of that healthy glow for more than a century. That's coming up.

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13:18Jonquilyn Hill:I'm JQ, back with more Explain It To Me. Summer 2026 is all about tan maxing, but it's not exactly a new trend. 100 years ago, people headed to the American Southwest in search of better weather and better health. Writer Lyra Kilston wrote all about it in her book, Sunseekers, The Cure of California. This was a movement that really boomed in the late 19th century and early 20th century. And that's when people were really dealing with a very terrible tuberculosis epidemic and other respiratory illnesses for which there were no cures. And the cure of sunshine became something that was actually prescribed by medical doctors.

14:08Patients would literally be told by their doctors, say in Chicago, Michigan, Boston, they would be told, you need to get down to the Southwest. You need to pack up your family and move in order to survive.

14:22Jonquilyn Hill:Does the sun actually have that healing power? It sounds wild to be prescribed sunshine now. I know. But actually, it does. The doctors back then, even though they were not, you know, it wasn't necessarily evidence-based medicine the way we understand it today, they were on to something. And later studies, like in the late 20th century, proved that vitamin D does actually fight some of the organisms that cause tuberculosis. So we have all these people moving to California for the sun and for the climate. When they got there, what did their treatment look like? Give me an average day in the life of someone getting this sun treatment.

15:03Okay.

15:07probably you would have to wake up early in the morning in order to get the most sunshine possible and you would be expected to be outdoors in the sun for as many hours as you could be sometimes if you were bedridden you might be on a bed that had been designed with wheels in a room with with doors that opened out to a porch for example so that you could just be wheeled right out into the sunshine and get that fresh air was also part of this. And also, so it greatly affected the way that hospitals were designed at the time. Not only did people start building architecture that incorporated a lot of windows and porches, but also because of the desire for air circulation and concern about contagion, And instead of just putting a lot of people into one big room, things like cottages became more popular also.

16:05So you could have a little bit more control over when you had access to fresh air and sunlight.

16:14Jonquilyn Hill:So is this sun cure something we invented here in the U.S.? No, it really started in Europe. And Switzerland and the Alps was a very popular place. And I should say that it's sunshine that was important to people, but it was also just a feeling at the time that cities had been growing so quickly and people's lives had been changing so quickly in terms of moving to cities, working in factories and so on. Humans were just living, at least in urban Europe, they were living a really different way than their ancestors had been. And things like sanitation and disease really kept pace, unfortunately.

16:52And so the idea of leaving the city and going to unspoiled nature in the Alps, for example, to heal was a very popular pastime.

17:03Jonquilyn Hill:Were there any downsides to this kind of sun maxing? Well, this is later on. So more in the early 1930s, there was a very strange link between sunbathing, sun worship, and tanning and emerging Aryan ideas about like a perfect body, a perfect health, the perfect strength, the strength of that race, etc. All of those things were combined in kind of a twisted way and sunbathing, nude or partially nude. I mean, I think to them, they were probably hearkening back to like ancient Greece or something, you know, when athletes competed in the nude. But there were some extremely popular books about sunbathing that were also filled with anti-Semitic tropes.

17:57Jonquilyn Hill:How long did this trend of sun seeking last? Sun as a cure was, it sort of went away as soon as antibiotics were available in the 1940s. A miracle out of mold. That same green mold which everyone has seen growing in bread or ruining fruit and vegetables. It produces the drug known as penicillin. Through mass production methods, America is continually increasing its output of penicillin, the new drug that affects almost miraculous cures. Once a much faster, more effective medical cure was available, the idea, people were not taking sun cures anymore. However, the legacy is still visible in places like Germany.

18:41You still have a lot of nude bathing by lakes and so on. They still call them things like free light bathing. So I think some of this residue is still there.

18:55Jonquilyn Hill:You know, earlier in the show, we had a conversation about tan maxing. People are back to, I know, I hear that sigh. I hear that sigh. People are back to chasing the sun, often without sunscreen. And some of them believe that sunscreen is unhealthy or even dangerous. Do you see similarities between now and then? Like, what is going on with our relationship with the sun? I would say that the belief in what the sun can do for you is very different. I mean, it was very much sort of a matter of life and death at that time. But I would say one link is that in some of the fringe communities in the late 19th, early 20th century, there was also a great skepticism about industrial processed foods.

19:44and so sunbathing and nature cures often went hand in hand with people who were vegetarians back in those days which looks very different than what it does now and would maybe be for example Seventh-day Adventists or followers of John Kellogg and his Battle Creek Sanatorium also the temperance movement so in terms of feeling sort of anti-establishment and also embracing the sun, I suppose maybe that's a resonance. I find it interesting to see all of the different waves of our relationship to the sun and tanning even. Like, for example, I think being very pale, at least in European culture, was considered very desirable for a very long time.

20:37you know just the sort of symbolism of what a tan meant than what it meant in the mid-century in terms of sort of like access to leisure time what it means now it just keeps changing and I find that really fascinating

20:55Jonquilyn Hill:Up next America's sun protection is finally catching up with the rest of the world

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