Petoskey — The sky is flat and gray. Every morning is the exact same. The blinds open, but no sunlight falls onto the bed. The floor on our bare feet is cold like concrete. The moment we rouse ourselves from our covers, we hobble to the shower, aching for warmth. We all wake up to the same frigid horror.
We flip through loving photos from August on our iPhones. “We were so happy then,” we muse. We look up and into the mirror, and we gasp. Our faces are cold as bone; sallow, and gray. My God.
It’s dreadful, demoralizing, but there is a cure. It’s not a pill or a trip down south. It doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. It’s right down the street, in a dark little room full of humming lightbulbs. The cure to our winter depression is the tanning bed.
I came of age in the early ’00s when tanning was quite common. Abercrombie & Fitch, the tanning bed, sandals in winter. Golden faces, ultra-ripped jeans, polos with the little moose logo, and perpetual summer. But since those hallowed days of yore, the tanning bed has fallen out of favor. Tanning has been viciously maligned and vilified to such a degree that going to a tanning bed in 2026 is akin to admitting to a great and terrible secular sin. Today, people claim to be “health conscious,” and that means believing that rotting in the dark rooms of winter like Morlocks is more healthy than acquiring a glorious glow before heading out to shovel the driveway.
Often, upon hearing the suggestion of tanning, people protest that you shouldn’t go tanning because you will get skin cancer.
Don’t make me laugh.
Northern Michigan is one of the cloudiest regions in the U.S. during the winter months. This isn’t a normal place. This frozen tundra is cloud-covered more than almost anywhere else, and you are telling me that going to the tanning bed a few times during these barren months is going give me skin cancer?
As I write these words in passionate defense of the tanning bed, I am looking out a bank of windows onto a sad and sunless sky. We have had approximately 6 hours of true sunlight over the past 21 days. Don’t tell me 15 minutes in the tanning bed isn’t good for you. This endless darkness is probably worse for you.
Beyond the pearl-clutching concerns about skin cancer, there aren’t any legitimate arguments against tanning in the winter. It’s vilified and eschewed for no good reason. People are more depressed and sallow than they need to be. In fact, ignoring the benefits of the tanning bed is a form of masochism.
Though I was in high school in the early aughts and thought of the tanning bed as a normal part of society then, as it waned from public consciousness, so too did it from mine as well. I too for a while thought it must be bad for you and suffered the winter without any help.
It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I started to wonder about the forgotten virtues of tanning. I was so down in early March, so cold and so tired of not feeling any warmth or any glimpse of the sun. I hated the way I looked too. The bags under my eyes were so pronounced. My skin was a grayish yellow! I was just feeling gloomy.
It was at that low point when I started to think about why I was so happy in the summer and if I could capture any hint of that in winter. And I remembered the long forgotten tanning bed of the early ’00s. I started questioning the narrative about it being so terrible, and I started to balance concerns about skin cancer against the fact of our inordinately cloudy climate.
So I went tanning, and I felt good. Laying there under the all-encompassing lights, the low hum of the machine in the dark room, the bright warmth hugging my body; it felt like what I had been missing. And so I went again, and again, and again. And I became someone who goes tanning.
It felt good, like how a sauna feels good. It heats you up in a novel way. But unlike a sauna, it makes you look good too. I am sorry to burst the bubble of the goths, emos, shut-ins, and crunchy vegan health freaks, but everyone looks better with a tan. No, that’s not a shallow observation. It’s just true, and it’s good to look good. Deep down everyone wants to look their best, and everyone looks better with a tan.
I love the summer. Living up on Little Traverse Bay, I am on the beach all summer. Every day it’s above 70, I’m there. I can’t get enough of the sun on my skin, the sound of the waves, and the feel of the warm sand. The tanning bed gives me about 10% of that, and it sustains me until I can get back on Lake Michigan.
I don’t tan in these months because I am an obsessively vain person hopelessly trying to hold onto youth or some impossibly perfect standard. I have gray hairs on my temples that keep coming as the years pass, and I would never dye my hair to hide them. I try to eat healthy and exercise, but I love a great greasy basket of fish and chips and don’t workout as much as I should. I go tanning for the same reason I wear decent clothes, shave every morning, wear cologne, and put my best foot forward. It’s good to look good.
Of course, you can become orange if you hit the bed too much. You can become too obsessed with tanning and you can forget how tan you are becoming. This happened in the early ’00s. Orange girls with platinum blond hair. Guys with highlighted hair and nuclear skin. You must be careful not to fall into the trap of the early ’00s. You just want a little color. You don’t want to look like a tangerine.
Is there a chance I might get skin cancer from tanning? Sure, I guess. There’s also a chance I might have a heart attack from all those baskets of fish and chips and straight bourbon. There’s also a chance I might get hit by a car before this is published. This might be my very last column and my enduring legacy. I’ll take the risk and the honor.
I am a staunch advocate for tanning during the deep winter months in Northern Michigan. We don’t live in Tucson; we live in one of the bleakest winter regions in the country. You don’t need to be so beat-down, you don’t need to be a masochist, you don’t need to be sallow with disturbing shark-colored skin. You can be happy and beautiful like you are in the summer all year round.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
