Vanity loves company

The lady at the gym said I could add tanning privileges to my membership for just $10 a month and that would include tanning for The Other Half, too.

It sounded good, but artificial tanning is just wrong. Dermatologists tell us to wrap up like mummies just to get the mail, so does it make sense to pay money -- no matter how little -- to purposefully expose ourselves to concentrated doses of ultraviolet radiation?

Plus everybody knows what you're up to. Only cheaters can have a deep, dark, savage tan in February. It's just so fake.

So of course I signed up, just as soon as I determined it was a stand-up unit instead of a bed. I envisioned myself struggling to close the lid on the bed-style tanning machine, then crashing through the protective glass onto the bulbs.

Judge me if you must, but are you so white that the sun's rays actually reflect off your thighs? Have you ever been mistaken for an albino? Is your skin so fair and translucent you can watch your varicose veins pulsate? Plus, everyone knows tan fat looks thinner than white fat.

I hadn't tanned since 1994, and then it was only in preparation for my wedding. I didn't know how technology might have improved over a decade.

In short, it hasn't. It's the same basic system of protecting your eyes and shutting yourself in a bright, enclosed space. With the stand-up system, there are handles attached to the ceiling so you can pretend you're on some sort of medieval tanning rack.

You tell a gym employee how long you want to go, and she sets your timer from behind the counter. I started with four minutes -- absolutely no effect. At six minutes, I saw just a touch of color. At eight minutes, just a little more, but nobody would be mistaking me for George Hamilton.

Then SHE got me.

There's a gym employee who's always bustling about, hurrying from one task to another. Some people juggle a variety of activities effectively, some don't, and now I know which type she is.

The Other Half and I walked up to the counter.

Already a toasty brown, he wanted 12 minutes. I wanted my usual eight.

"OK. Twelve minutes on room one, eight minutes on two," she said distractedly.

"So I'm room two, right?" I asked, just to be sure.

"Right," she assured me.

Time stands still in a tanning room. There's the muted light of the bulbs through your goggles, the whirr of the exhaust fan and nothing but your own thoughts to entertain you. Some have radios, but the ones at my gym don't. To me, each session is a hot eternity to be endured in the name of beauty.

But this session seemed to be going particularly long.

Not to be too graphic, but one of the joys of artificial tanning is the lack of tan lines, which means parts of your body that haven't seen sunlight are exposed to UV rays -- in this case, for four minutes too long.

Mr. Half was waiting when I walked out.

"Shouldn't you have been in there longer than me?" I asked

"My session seemed especially short," he said.

The damage didn't completely show up until the next day. Think tomato. Think lobster. Think very large, very crimson woman wanting to kill a gym employee.

A week later, there still are shades of pink on me not typically found in nature.

I've definitely got to lay off the tanning. At least for a few more days.

Heidi Hall is a former managing editor of the Southeast Missourian who now lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.