I agree with your example that tanning skewes people ideas of beauty. Now, since tanning has become extremely popular, young people feel the need to go out and tan without taking the risks of cancer into consideration.

For example, the show Jersey Shore is immensely popular for its characters being super tan. One of the characters, Vinny, was fairly light skinned and his own roomates criticized him for being 'too white' and 'pale'. Even he felt the pressure to tan.

This sends out the wrong message to young people because teens are at a stage that they feel the need to fit in and conform. Jersey Shore is the epitome of what young teens think is cool and want to follow in their footsteps. If we have shows loke this that are extremely popular in our culture, what kind of future and example do we set up for our generations to come?

Along with stricter laws, we should also implement topics of the dangers of tanning into our high school health classes. Like sex education, we should expose our teens to the dangers they can face if they decide to take action. Some teens might just tan regardless of the risks but if we just explain to them what the dangers really are, we can at least get them to think twice before they do something that they will regret in the future.