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My first indoor tanning experience

January 23, 2010 at 10:18 pm (Personal) (advice, beach, before, butler plaza, center, clean, cold, deceiving, florida, gainesville, ghostly, kills, makeup, mtv, nervous, never, nice, positioned, protection, reports, salon, skin, start, stipped, stole, surprised, sweats, tan, tan usa, tanning, tanning bed, tanning salon, try, uv rays, virginity, winter)

Tan USA stole my tanning-bed virginity…

I’m almost 22, and I live in Florida —  why would I have a reason to lay in a tanning bed rather than on the beach? I’ve never gone to a tanning salon before, but now I live in Gainesville where there is no beach. It kills me we don’t have a beach closer than an hour away; I grew up spoiled, with the beach only 10 minutes away.

As funny as it may seem, my boyfriend accompanied me to the tanning salon — we’ve both gotten ghostly this cold winter. And lucky for us, we got a free month trial membership!

I was a little nervous. I’ve heard the cautions; I’ve seen the news reports. Are tanning beds safe? I knew I wasn’t going every day, or even more than once every few weeks, so why not give it a try?

I walked into the salon without makeup and wearing sweats. The storefront in Butler Plaza was deceiving because I was pleasantly surprised how clean and nice the salon was inside. I told the girl at the desk that I’ve never been tanning before, so I wanted her advice for level and length of the tan. She gave me her opinion, and then I expected her to help me with the process more than walking me to the door of the bed and saying, “OK press this button to start, and it’s just like the rest.” Umm… I’ve never been to “the rest.”

I’ve seen meat-heads use tanning beds on MTV, so I knew I could figure it out. I stripped down, loaded my skin with lotion, pressed the green button and positioned myself in the center of the bed — anxious but excited to be a little bit more tan in 10 minutes.

The bed’s timer didn’t read “10 minutes” like it was supposed to; it read “20 minutes.” I didn’t want to burn and have a horrible first experience, so I kept an eye on the timer — an unprotected eye subjected to the UV rays. It felt weird that I didn’t have eye protection, but the girl didn’t say anything. It’s her job, so these beds are probably OK, I thought.

Of course, as soon as I stepped out of the bed, I saw the big sign on the back of the door warning about eye protection. I told her I’ve never been. I didn’t know. Was it my fault I didn’t have eye protection? Would this exposure mess up my vision? She was supposed to give us I protection, I later found out. For some reason WE were supposed to ask for it…

So I had a funky first experience, but I left with a nice base tan. I guess now I know for next time. I also know NOT to get bed No. 13!

(image: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tanusa.biz/images/tanusalogo.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.tanusa.biz/Packages.html&usg=__ddbWPOXHLfWNK1nCt52cUVbNfWQ=&h=188&w=562&sz=22&hl=en&start=14&um=1&tbnid=2YoSt0YkPvuy4M:&tbnh=44&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtan%2Busa%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1 )

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