Healthy glow?

I undressed and climbed into a coffin-shaped vestibule full of cancer-causing light with an angry bee with an enormous stinger painted on the side. \nI'm not describing my experience as a prisoner of war. All I did was "go tanning."\nThis past Saturday was the first time in about five years I'd subjected myself to a tanning bed. The combination of being naked and locked in a 4-by-4-foot room with the knowledge that what I was doing was absolutely negative for my health was oddly satisfying.\nPlus, I couldn't help but enjoy my healthy glow upon exiting the bed.\nBut later that night, as I observed my previously fair but now very, very red belly, it occurred to me that, extremely falsely, U.S. culture conflates health with beauty. That is, a beautiful person is perceived also as healthy.\n'Going tanning' is certainly one of the most evident ways that the illusion of health is prized over actual health -- at least in attempting to obtain white beauty ideals.\nIt is well-known by even the most mildly educated folk that being tan IS having skin harmed by the sun's ultraviolet rays that cause cancer. Where I come from, anyway, having cancer is not being in good health. And, believe me, chemotherapy is no party.\nAnd yet, the images of white celebrities with the bodies and style we worship are mostly tanned or bronzed. If they are not, they are pegged as "a unique beauty." (I'm thinking Scarlett Johannsen here.)\nThis 'beauty as health concept' extends much further. \nTake a look in a grocery store: aisles with cough syrups and headache medicines are the same ones that include teeth whiteners and shampoos. To take care of one's body, this suggests, is to take care of both one's inner and outer "self."\nFat is almost inarguably the physical feature with the least respectability in the United States. Being "fat" is, by mass media and, thus, many Americans, paralleled with being lazy, unsuccessful, ugly and certainly unhealthy.\nThe most dangerous part of the health/beauty conflation are these moral tags that accompany the categories. To be beautiful -- that is, to conform to standard beauty ideals -- is to be successful, a winner, healthy, friendly, good. To be ugly -- that is, to deviate or to disregard beauty standards, especially people who are fat -- is to be unworthy, disgusting, bad.\nThese labels make for a harsh reality. The idea of "beauty on the inside" is lovely but also misleading.\nNot everyone can be beautiful. \nWhat everyone can be, however, is interesting, educated, worthy and meaningful contributors to society. And isn't that what we all want to be, after all?\nWe mustn't judge ourselves or others based on what we see in mass-media images. The people and body parts in magazines rarely actually exist as portrayed.\nAnd it's just not healthy.\nNow go eat your fiber, and wear a wide-brimmed hat when you go out in the sun.