Moon Tans Trendy Again

An anti-tanning campaign launching throughout Australia has pleased Sam Bowring for his own insecure reasons.

The Cancer Council of Australia has recently launched the Dark Side of Tanning, which follows their first, self titled album. No, haha, it's actually the name of an anti-tanning campaign. You may have seen the advert currently doing the rounds? It features a young girl lying on a beach, and then through the Magic of Computer Technology we are taken inside her skin to see all the cancerous damage that tanning can cause. The ad ends off by saying "there's nothing healthy about a tan".

And I say, thank Christ for that! Finally I have an excuse for my pale, pale skin! Have a look at the picture and you'll see what I mean.

I used to feel self conscious about being the same colour as Stephen Hawking's arse cheeks, or getting mistaken for a heroin addict. I've seen people come out of the womb with a better tan than me. But who cares now? It seems that white is the new black!

The fact is, my bleached look is healthy - ladies. I'm the very picture of health. A faded picture, yes, ironically as if it had been left out in the sun for too long.

The point is, you can forget about your tanned muscle-men. What good are your muscles now mister? You can't punch cancer. You can't use your generically fashionable long sleeved shirt with squiggly patterns on it, to keep your skin from falling off, can you?

That all said, it's still a bit of a drag that everything gives you cancer. They're always discovering links to cancer, and telling us about them. Eating gives you cancer, as does walking around in the sun breathing in car fumes and radio waves, as does drinking booze, or even basic human needs like rubbing aluminium into our armpits. Probably sitting at computers editing cancer awareness ads gives you cancer.

Really, they should release an ad saying "there's nothing healthy about being alive. Are you alive? Yes? Well, it's a pretty good bet that something is going to go wrong. Sorry."

I guess at least being tanned makes for a decent looking corpse.

Sigh.

- Sam Bowring