What is the Deal with Bodybuilders and Tanning?

Odd as it seems, being tan hundreds of years ago was a mark of being poor, of belonging to the working class (serfdom) whose members toiled in the fields all day long. Not being tan was a sign of affluence; people powdered their faces to appear more pallid. But today, being tan is associated with having the means, spending leisure time in the outdoors, to vacation on the beach, on the golf course, taking a boat on a 3 hour cruise, etc. Tanning has a sort of status appeal nowadays.

If you've ever seen bodybuilding competitors on stage, they're all tan; they all look brown or tried to be. Some are naturally suntanned, some are tanned artificially through use of UV tanning beds. Others with fair skin use dyes that color the skin. There are others still, who use dyes because of the dangers of developing skin cancer.

Bodybuilders don't brown themselves for status reasons. They do it because a tan brings out the definition in the muscles. It's a visual effect. For this reason, fitness models are also usually a little more tan than not. In "body transformation" photos (before-and-after pictures) the after photo almost always shows a more tanned body.

A downside of long exposure to the sun (besides skin cancer, of course) is premature aging of the skin. There are nuns in convents who rarely see the sun and even in their 60's they apparently have the skin of teens. Leathery skin from a lifetime of UV radiation is not something good. Lying out under the sun and in machines is also time-consuming; boring.

Dyes are often difficult to spread evenly and when applied to the face and ears to match the body, it often looks like some have painted themselves with wood stain, using a too-big paintbrush.

There are costs for being bronzed which may not be worth the benefits. The rising incidence of deadly skin cancer, malignant melanoma does not help this. But there is hopeful news!

The journal Nature reports:

Fake tanner wards off skin cancer:
Plant extract triggers pigmentation to protect fair skin.
There is hope for fair-skinned people who long for a tan. Researchers have found a chemical from a tropical mint plant that works both as a sunless tanner and as a solar shield in fair-skinned mice. If the compound works for people too, it could prove a boon for the cosmetics industry and a life-saver for people with a rare genetic disorder that keeps them indoors. Unlike other sunless tanners on the market that simply dye the skin, forskolin prompts the body to produce a real tan, protecting against ultraviolet radiation.

Scientists develop a sunless tan (BBC)
Scientists have given mice a tan without exposing them to the sun.
They have developed a cream, which has not yet been tested on humans, that switches on the tanning machinery in skin cells.

Experimental Lotion Could Be Secret to a Safe Tan (NPR)
"I will confess I suspected we might see some darkening," says Fisher. "But I was fairly shocked that it was as efficient and complete as what we actually saw."

After several weeks, of applying every day, the mice became really tan.

Sunless Suntan Proves Possible (Scientific American)
Sun seekers and tanning-bed junkies take note: Researchers have induced honest-to-goodness suntans in mice without exposing them to ultraviolet (UV) rays.

Estimated number of people worldwide who die each year from too much sun: 60,000