She’s got a dark dependency.
Like fresh air and clean water, tanning beds have become an everyday necessity for Megan Blain.
And despite her high-risk of developing skin cancer from the ultraviolet rays, the 18-year-old student refuses to forgo her faux glow.
“I want to stop one day but I can’t ever imagine myself not going on the sun beds,” Blain, a content creator from the UK, explained on TikTok, per Kennedy News.
“I’ve noticed a patch on my skin which keeps changing size,” she said before admitting her reluctance to go to the doctor. “For me not to be worried about potentially having melanoma[…]and still abuse the sun beds, [it’s] made me realize this is an addiction.”
“I just never think I’m dark enough.”
However, an undying desire to get darker can cause a near-death experience.
Edith Eagle, a 47-year-old stepmother of four, was “minutes” away from dying after snorting the $32 “Barbie Drug” nasal spray tanner, Melanotan.
“I could’ve died that day,” said the Gen Xer. “Please don’t make the same mistake as me.”
But it seems younger folks, like Blain, would rather “die hot than live ugly.” So, they regularly slink into tanning beds to come out toasted to perfection, regardless of the potentially fatal consequences.
In fact, Gen Zs have been blamed for inciting the tanning craze in NYC.
“We’re seeing younger and younger people,” Win Gruber, owner of Upper East Side Tan previously told The Post.
Margarita Anconova, owner of Portofino Murray Hill Sun Center, added, “Gen Z, they see their posts on social media of people being tan, and they want to be tan. Everyone wants to be beautiful.”
Fionnghuala Maguire’s attempt at enhancing her beauty on a sun bed nearly placed the millennial mom on a deathbed. In 2020, she was diagnosed with Stage 1 melanoma, brought on by her browning obsession.
“My mom was diagnosed with skin cancer and had to have a couple of tumors removed,” said Maguire, 35, who’s had to have several cancerous moles removed from her body since receiving the daunting diagnosis. “[She] used to tell me to stop using the sunbeds but you don’t listen, you think you’re invincible.”
A false sense of invincibility seems to have Blain spellbound.
“It doesn’t even faze me that I could have melanoma and could turn into something life-threatening,” said the blonde. “It doesn’t scare me at all.”
She’s become “addicted” to tanning since adopting a habit of hopping into the human ovens for several hours each day over the past two years.
To take her hue up a notch, Blain initially slathered herself in baby oil, hoping the goo with deepen her darkness. But she ultimately ditched the rub for tanning injections — shots that mimic the body’s pigment-producing hormones — even though the jabs make her, “feel sick and sometimes unable to eat.”
However, since acknowledging her “abuse” of tanning beds, the Zoomer has reduced her time beneath the bulbs from every day to four times a week.
“I find it hard to turn the sunbed off once I’m on,” she confessed. “I don’t even like going on sunbeds, I dread it, but I feel like I physically have to go on.”
And yet, haters on the street can’t help but to stop and gawk.
“Everywhere I go, I see people staring at me,” groaned Blain.
Online, trolls have likened her overly-bronzed bod to a “burnt chip” and a “dirty coin.” Virtual vultures have even left comments beneath her posts, asking: “Did [the sunbeds] cremate you?.”
Blain’s loved ones have also weighed in with their concerns about her coloring compulsion.
“My family say I’m too dark,” said the belle, claiming, however, that she can’t see the effects of her intense tinting.
“I do care what people think,” she continued. “When people say I’m dark, I actually find that hard to believe. I don’t feel dark whatsoever — it’s like I’m physically blind.”
The glamor gal’s willful ignorance aside, she is advising her peers against falling victim to her skin-searing addiction.
“After two years, my views on sunbeds have changed,” Blain insisted. “If I could go back in time, I would’ve never started.”
“I just feel like I have to go on the sunbeds — it’s not even a case of wanting to be tanned anymore,” she lamented.
“The younger generation seem to be using [sunbeds] more than the older generation,” added Blain, “which is concerning because If I got addicted without even realizing it then the same could happen to other people.”
