Each month in our Healthwatch Essex Journal Club, one of our Research Ambassadors shares an article that they are interested in – giving our network a chance to read, reflect, and discuss together in our WhatsApp community. It’s a space for learning, questioning, and exploring research in an informal and supportive way.
In this month’s Journal Club, Research Manager Dr Kate Mahoney shared an article which looked at how changing media portrayals of sunbed users were influenced by representations of class, gender and politics in the 1980s and 1990s. This article was written by medical historian Fabiola Creed who has done some interesting work on the ‘rise of the sunbed’ in the late twentieth century Britain.
Here are the article details for anyone that is interested in this topic:
Authors: Fabiola Creed.
Title: From ‘Immoral’ Users to ‘Sunbed Addicts’: The Media-Medical Pathologising of Working-class Consumers and Young Women in Late Twentieth-century England.
Article Link: https://academic.oup.com/shm/article/35/3/770/6575717
This was a thought-provoking article which encouraged many of the group to reflect on the ‘tanning culture’ that was apparent during their school years and how this continues to persist today. As always, our ambassador reflections demonstrate the value of coming together to explore different topics from a range of perspectives and experiences:
“I found it extremely thought provoking on several levels. It made me reflect on an element from my A level politics that looked at voting behaviour (what influenced both American and British voters to make the choices they did at elections). I sat my A levels over 35 years ago which was about the time of the first news stories referenced in the article and until today I had never made the connection that the approaches to influence the public were abundant outside of the political arena”. – Sarah
“Extremely interesting article navigating the perceptions of using sunbeds with support from popular media of the time.
The analysis used to understand the role of the media, using the intersectionality of classism and sexism to explain the portrayal of sun bed users was extremely informative.
Fabiola done a great job explaining how perceptions change when something, in this context sunbeds, go from being economically exclusive to upper classes to being economically accessible. As well as highlighting the persistence of the media to continue to frame something negatively. For example, the narrative changing from women being portrayed as leaching off men to get sunbeds to young professionals focusing too much on their appearance and ‘wasting’ their money.
It is also interesting how she highlights fictional TV impacts public perception and how that translates even more in the digital age, rise of misinformation, AI and deep fakes.
Similarly, the themes around the beauty standards and expectations in the context of social media has continued and become more pervasive. The portrayal of ‘bimbos’ and other negative perceptions has definitely persisted in reality tv and media today.
Applying the research to my personal experience:
I very much appreciated this article in understanding tanning, the history and why it is still prevalent. It helps us to understand opinions today. From my experiences, I resonated with concepts laid out by Fabiola, and it was great to see social concepts explained and defined.
In my school, being ‘tanned’ was the optimal beauty standard. I tried using fake tan a couple times when I was 10/11 years old and decided it wasn’t for me. I remember girls at school using lots of fake tan but never being satisfied. Saying phrases used in the article like ‘I’m not dark enough’ and only feeling skinny if they were tanned. I think understanding and defining these concepts with intersectionality is extremely important. The unrealistic beauty standards do impact people’s perception and self-worth. Explaining the intersectionality can help people to understand themselves and potentially break free from pressure of the unfair standards or putting those standards onto others.” – Katie
“This is a very interesting feminist and critical perspective. I particularly like the incorporation and method of ‘low brow’ media sources (although not sure if Punch and the Guardian can be classified as such). The stereotyping of women as tanorexics was central in this article for me. It explored fear of cancer (media) and risk of cancer (medical) very well. The article states that women were disinterested in risks (but is it uninterested?). The cartoon was a nice and very relevant inclusion. Finally, the article could be followed by another focusing on post 2000 sun tans/ beauty regimes. Spray tans are now in vogue (on Strictly Come Dancing, for example) and social media/ reality TV (eg. Think it’s called Love Island) is now the arbiter of good looks/ beauty, of women but for perhaps also men in this century”. – Ben
“Thanks for sharing this Kate! It was interesting to learn about the narratives and media framing of sunbed usage in this article. I think it’s particularly interesting how sun beds were previously seen as healthy. I ended up looking into this topic a bit more and came across a whole book by Fabiola Creed on it – if anyone is interested, it’s available open access – : https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350450363 “. – Joe
“These insights are so valuable Katie – thank you. Your overview of the ways Fabiola adopts an intersectional approach are so valuable, as well as your connection between the themes in the article and portrayals of beauty standards by reality tv today. I think the article does a lot to highlight how historical research can help us to think about current trends and discourses.
Your own reflections about tanning at school are really interesting too so thank you for sharing. I think there was similarly a commitment to using fake tan amongst my peers at school (though I always remember how hard it was to apply without looking streaky!) and a competitiveness to getting the most tanned over the summer. Being tanned still seems to be associated with ‘looking healthy’ today.
This are really interesting points Ben. I like your reflections on what constitutes ‘low brow media’ and I think it would be really valuable how the history of the sun bed continued into the 2000s. As Joe has flagged, Fabiola has now published a book on the broader history of the sunbed. I need to take a look and see when her history in the book ends.”. – Kate
“Thanks for sharing the article this month Kate, as from everyone’s reflections this was a really interesting read!
I echo what most people have said and Katie’s reflections on fake tan in schools resonated with myself too, I think that’s one thing that has seem to stick throughout different generations in school (would be interesting to look at this with the rise of new social media platforms like TikTok and trends such as ‘Sunny Bs’ and ‘clean girl aesthetic’). I also found the point about having a tanning bed in a gym really interesting, had to give that one a google as I’d never heard of that before (to then find out that this does still exist) I think it reinforces that connection between being tanned and beauty standards. I too like Ben enjoyed the inclusion of the cartoon and it helped to put things into perspective. The media portrayal of various behaviours has always been an interest of mine, so it was insightful to read around this too, as with Katie’s reflections, the themes on beauty standards have definitely persisted in media today. I think Fabiola mentioned it in the conclusion that it’s important for historians to look at how the media portrays things to uncover more histories of women’s health”. – Beth
This month’s article facilitated insightful and supportive conversations and reflections from our research ambassadors. Ambassadors enjoyed reading about this month’s topic and found the portrayal of sunbeds and tanning in the media particularly interesting. Many ambassadors also shared how this article resonated with their own experiences, including the beauty standards of tanning during school. These reflections highlight what our journal club is all about – sharing knowledge, personal experience and asking questions to build confidence in reading and exploring research. Kate’s article this month encouraged our network to engage with diverse literature, enhancing our insight into research texts.
Our Journal Club is open to all our Research Ambassadors – if you would like to become a Research Ambassador or are looking for more information on research, please contact our Research Manager Dr Kate Mahoney at [email protected].
We are looking forward to next month’s article, which will be shared by Research Ambassador Hattie.