Maybe Paris started it. Maybe Pamela Anderson did. Who knows who started it, but it’s never stopped. You’ve seen these girls around school, pale one day then overly caramel-colored bronzed skin the next. In even worse cases they’re coated in what looks like a horrible, sticky orange coating of paint.

The “natural glow” of beach babes has been replaced by tan-o-rexic fake bake. It’s no shock tanning salons are everywhere, even in a place like Florida where the sun is free. So what brings the ladies (and frat boys) of FAU to tanning beds? Are we so lazy we can’t even give ourselves free cancer? No.

Rather, the people who frequent these establishments are trying to fake a number of things, which include but are not limited to: 1. They’ve been on vacation. 2. They’re trying to establish that “natural glow” (insert obvious pun here). 3. They’re celebrity wannabes.We all see the bronzed goddesses staring up at us on the cover of US Weekly. Only their glow isn’t from a bed; it’s from a jar, and they pay people lots of money to make it look somewhat real. We mortals on the other hand, bake in beds because it’s cheaper and gives an even burn/tan, as well as the wrinkles that go with it.

So while we pine to look like the people on glossy magazine covers or appear as if we’ve come back from a vacation, we really are just fooling ourselves. One might ask, (okay maybe me for now) why even bother? When did pale become ugly? To me, a pale look is better then the over-the-top stripper/porn fake bake any day. It’s classier. Do you think Marilyn Monroe, Winona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow or Audrey Hepburn would ever be caught dead at a tanning salon? No. They were classy, not fake.

It’s gotten so bad, even Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama of all self-help (and his own self-love), had a show dealing with this epidemic. He had a guest wear aging makeup to literally show her how she would look if she didn’t stop, and she still refused to quit her habit. When asked why, she said, “I look better with a tan.” To which she got, “You’ll lose it when you start chemo.”

So while you might be fooling your classmates and you’re self, it’s only a few years before you’ll be sporting a nice leather chest look, and that in no way can be faked to look good any day.