A Just A Little Bit Orange Feature
By Clara Pettitt. Copyright © 11/26/2000. All Rights Reserved.

Sunless.com in Chicago — Page Two

Being an outsider earned me one small bonus. My sunless.com badge seemed to have the same effect as a clerical collar: everyone had a confession. Throughout the Expo, people I had never seen before in my life passed on to me what I will call Hot Rumors.

These Hot Rumors are scattered throughout this feature.

Off to the Expo!

Looking Fit, trade journal for the tanning industry and organizers of the Expo, announced on the banner over the entrance that their goal is to double the number of U.S. tanners in the next five years.

According to Looking Fit, there are currently 27.5 million people in the U.S. who tan indoors, and there are 20,000 tanning salons nationwide.

It would appear that the tanning industry could afford to be complacent — yet they are suing Time Magazine in Canada. According to a leaflet titled Suntan/Time Fight Fund that I picked up at the Expo, the suit is due to the depiction of "a beautiful young lady in a yellow bikini lying in a coffin. The coffin was lined with tanning lamps. The words alongside the picture said 'use a tanning bed regularly and your chances of getting skin cancer increase by 800%.'"

The leaflet goes on to call this a "totally wrong and irresponsible statement."

Really? While something like "Fun things to do with matches and gasoline" might be called irresponsible, I don't see how quoting from a respectable study can be called such.

My first stop at the Expo was the Mist-On Tan booth, where I met Dr. Tom Laughlin, inventor of the Mist-On Tan, his wife Darline, and his daughter Anne.

At that moment, Dr. Laughlin was besieged by people with questions, so I headed off to see the rest of the Expo.

Next stop was Supre, which needs to get a prize for giving away the best samples with the most cheerfulness. I received the new tinted foundation sun screen; later usage showed it to be similar to Clinique Almost Makeup SPF 15, with a greater selection of colors.

Supre is coming out with a hemp line, but the exhibitor at the booth was not sure if there will be a sunless tanner among them. He did assure me the hemp line wouldn't have that unfortunate odor that The Body Shop hemp line has.