Thread: pre tan before visit to SSB

What's the consensus should you pre-tan before heading to AN beach. We have years of covered body and parts this will definitely standout as we have first ventures. Should you use the instant tan salons? Just another thing to do prior to arrival, LOL.

Depends if you care about your health or not.

Tanning booths are proven to be bad for you, so it's not worth it if you wish to do the most you can to stay healthy.

I have worked at tanning salons for years. If you do it the right way, you will be fine and not burn those spots when you do get to Jamaica.

I'm still not convinced that a couple visits to a tanning booth is going to worse for your health than a bad sunburn. Having said that, we've both been so swamped with work and life in general that the only color we have is what remains from last year, which is to say very little.

Most people at SSB will have tan lines, though perhaps not as pronounced. Just be careful. Use way more waterproof sunscreen than you think you need and apply often. Be careful of the reflection if you're in the pool (that's how I completely fried my back a couple years ago), and remember to find shade now and then.

In regards to your body parts not seeing sun in a few years, what you can do is go to a tanning salon that has the beds and spray tan and only lay in the bed for 5 to 10 mins and then do the spray tan. Do this once or twice a week, until you are ready to leave on your trip and you will have a great tan. You won't be orange either from the spray tan. If you lay in the bed for 5 to 10 mins before getting sprayed. This is what I do before we leave and everyone always comments on how great my tan is. Just an idea.

Some people tan before, some don't. We used to, but we don't anymore. You won't stick out either way. Do what pleases you and your SO, nobody else. For some reason it seems like people look better when they have a little color, as opposed to being pasty white. I have heard it's becoming more common to do spray-on tan since that's significantly safer than tanning the old fashioned way. Perhaps we'll try that this year.

Sunnydayz is absolutely right about skin damage caused by the ultra violet rays flooding your body in tanning booths. In fact, I just read that the FDA indicates that if you tan in tanning booths by the age of 30, your chances of getting skin cancer go up by 75%. I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of daunting to me. In fact, as I was crawling out of the tanning booth a couple days ago, I looked at the bulbs closer than I ever have. Each bulb had a danger/warning label printed right on the end of the bulb. And the bed has about 30 or 40 bulbs. Yikes!

So, with that said, my wife and I have a phobia about going out on a Caribbean beach looking like a powdered donut. So, for our two trips to CSS we have chosen to tan. Dangerous? Yes. I suppose laying out on the beach and torching our skin so bad that we can't move for four days is probably just as bad.

So, if you have (and use) Google, just do some research. I've never found that anyone is shy about giving advice or offering fairly scary statistics regarding getting any sun at all.

In fact, quite frankly, this is a choose-your-poison kind of issue. Here's my advice. Do some research and make your own decision based on what makes sense in your particular situation. Some might say to use a palapa and avoid direct sunlight all together.

Since you're posting in the AN section, I'm guessing you're thinking about going bareback at SSB. We did it for the first time in February and are headed back in just over a week. We choose to tan a few weeks out, so we don't burn quite as easily and don't look like a couple of powdered donuts.

There is basically nothing we've experienced as freeing as laying in the sun au naturel. Assess the risks, know the facts, and press on.

We don't tan before we go. I never liked tanning beds, and couldn't see spending the money. But the choise is your's. I spend the money on extra sun screen so that I won't burn, and my skin gets a little extra moisture from the sunscreen so as not to dry out.

There are endless articles going back and forth regarding tanning and your health risks associated with it. It's definitely hard to determine the right course of action for you. I think a bad sun burn is worse than a few sessions in the tanning bed, however, I still think the tanning bed is bad, so I try to minimize exposure to both.

If you haven't tried the "stand up" beds, check them out. One of the places I go to recently added a "high pressure stand up" unit and you only go in it for like 6-10 minutes.. it never increases in time but it does a pretty good job. Also, you don't have to lay on the glass where somebody else did, you just stand there listening to music for the duration.

My fiance is very fair skinned and she also prefers the high pressure stand up. We did AN for the first time CTI last year. Just bring some higher SPF for the sensitive lighter spots and take time in the shade. We would rotate from the sun to the shade quite often. We didn't get amazingly tan while in Jamaica, but we had a good time and didn't burn our bums, so all was good!

I agree with the comments about UV light of any kind having health implications. So I think it is a "pick your poison" kind of scenario. We didn't pre-tan for our first vist to Cn, but did for our second. I know we will pre-tan for visit next year. While some people in the tanning salon were doing 9 - 12 minutes in a session, we were doing 5 - 6 minutes every 4 or 5 days. We didn't get really dark before we went but we certainly had some color.

...and spray tanning... it doesn't offer you any SPF, but tanning in a UV bed does. I personally wouldn't do spray tanning. I know the risks laying in a tanning bed. I think we're still in the guinea pig timeframe when it comes to spray on tans. Something about inhaling a mist into my mouth, nose, throat and lungs that is staining my skin. I can't believe that's a good thing.

One last thing... you can't use too much sunscreen when you're in Jamaica, but you can certainly use too little. We use SPF 50 when we're there and yes we still get a tan. And for those that say anything over SPF 30 is useless... my skin seems to notice the difference. with SPF30 I get red, with SPF 50 I don't.

the decision to pre-tan is ultimately yours. If you don't pre-tan just go little slower with your sun time when you first arrive.

ENJOY!!!

Doesn't the spray tan wash off? I don't know anything about it. Does it have sunscreen-like properties??

In the past I use to go to tanning bed 6 times a week. This year even reluntant to do it I went only 2 times a week. I have alittle color and I am happy with that. Sunscreen I use all the time so I hope that my reasoning will pay off. see you in two weeks and one day.

I have always been maniacal with sunblock and tried my hardest not to burn. I would allow myself a little color when at the beach, and have visited tanning beds maybe 25 times in my life.

I was just diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Now the good news is we caught it early, and it should only require surgery to treat. The bad news is I am going to have an ugly ugly scar on my chest for the rest of my life. (I'm 36.)

Please, take it from me..... STAY AWAY FROM THE BEDS. After doing some research on them, the UV % between A and B is totally different than the sun, and you are getting the WRONG type of UV rays. Sun if you must (in moderation) but for the pre-tanning? Spray it on.

I can completely understand where Vee is coming from and I am so sorry to hear about the melanoma. My heart goes out to you. However, me and my wife umm'ed and err'ed before we went to CSS in early November. Deciding to frequent SSB (not our usual holiday activity) made us think about the 'very' white bits, especially as we expected to have almost constant sun. Eventually we decided to do only 35 minutes of pre-tanning at a local salon. We did it in small bites,. 5 mins here and there for two weeks. As it happens we had almost two weeks of cloud cover but we still got a great tan. Not, perhaps, as great as we had hoped. If the sun had shone more often I believe that the pre-tanning would have helped enormously on those sensitive areas that normally don't see the sun.

Pre-tanning or not must be a personal decision but if you decide so to do then ensure that it is in short bursts and only to give you a light tan from which to start the sun induced tan.

Be safe and be sensible, as ever. Oh how we wish we were still on SSB lapping up the sun and feeling free from the chains that are clothes and the stress that is life. Here in London we have been wrapped up warm with scarfs and boots as we trudge to the City in the snow. Very early for UK and over 13" deep. Kinda fun for a day or two then rather in the way!


Johnnie M