Hnatek 1

Hallie Hnatek

UWRT 1103-006

Beth Caruso

5 April 2017

The Tanning Trend

Since being popularized in the 1920s by fashion icon Coco Chanel,

methods for achieving tanned skin have varied from prolonged sun exposure,

to spray tans, to tanning beds and beyond, each escorted by their own set of

risks. However, despite a wide variety of available information surrounding

the dangers that accompany each of these tanning methods, a large

percentage of people, predominantly youth, continue to abuse their skin with

tanning. I have chosen to use my inquiry research to explore the dangers

behind tanning beds in particular, and how to convey theis message of their

risks to todays teens.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website,

every time you tan you increase your risk of getting skin cancer, and

indoor tanning also causes premature skin aging, changes your skin texture,

and increases the risk of potentially blinding eye diseases (par.3). . To

display my knowledge about the dangers of tanning beds, I decided to create

a magazine advertisement . I chose this type of genre because I believed

itthat it would be the most effective method in appealing to the population of

those who most often read fashion magazines, e youth who are most often

the ones to read fashion magazines, where this advertisement would be

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placed. Additionally, because the advertisement includes minimal words or

facts I ensured that the viewers eye would be easily drawn to the main focus

of my advertisement, which is my picture. because this advertisement is not

overcrowded with words or facts and because the main focus is my picture,

viewers would be more likely to pay attention to the advertisement because

it easily captures the eye. I intentionally purposefully made the image

picture dramatic and purposefully portrayed tanning beds in a a very

negative light because I believed this was this to be the best method to force

for viewers to take my message seriously and to fully comprehend

understand the consequences that follow the tanning addiction.

The intended audience forrom my pieces focuses specifically on

teenagers and young adults who range from about 15-29 years old, and

particularly teenage the young womengirls who fall into this category. I

decided to focus on this demographic because this is the group in particular

frequently services tanning beds, unaware or nave about the fact that skin

cancer can still impact young age groups. that most often service tanning

beds. This group of young adults is often unaware or nave about the fact

that skin cancer, including melanoma which is the deadliest type of skin

cancer, can still impact age groups as young as theirs. According to the

Melanoma Foundation, Melanoma is the second most common cancer for

young adults aged 15-29 years old. (par.8). More specifically, I found that

within this age group there appears to be a correlation between reading

certain magazines and consistently using tanning practices. For this reason, I
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ensured that my target audience will see the advertisement by posting it in

several of the most popular beauty magazines such as Vogue, Elle and

InStyle. My goal in concentrating on this group is to help make them aware of

the risks they are taking each time they visit a tanning bed, and to hopefully

reduce their frequency in visiting tanning salons. Because there is a

demographic correlation between those who read certain magazines and

those who consistently use tanning practices, I will ensure that my target

audience sees the advertisement by posting it in several of the most popular

beauty magazines. By posting the advertisement in one of these

popularizeda magazines, I that many youth respect and frequently read will

hopefully help ensure that viewersthey pay close attention to the message

portrayed by my advertisement and therefore become more aware of the

risks they are taking each time they visit a salon..

According to an article inby Womens Health MagazineMagazine

written by Meghan Rabbitt, Tanning beds might as well be coffins, and

oncologists now believe they are to blame for the alarming spike among

young women in lethal melanoma casesthe second most common cancer

in adults under 30. (Rabbitt, par. 1). From this research, I was inspired to

beginFor this reason, my piece I began by making the center focus of my my

advertisement a picture of half of a tanning bed, joined by half of a coffin. .

The reason I made this the center focus of my page was because my main

goal in creating this advertisement was to convey the message that the

biggest risk associated with frequent use of tanning beds is death, which is
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something that customers often ignore, forget, or deny. I decided to include

half of a tanning bed because this is an easily recognizable object to frequent

tanning bed users, so their eyes will be immediately drawn to it. By means of

attaching the coffin, which is another easily identifiable object, the audience

can conclude that death is a direct result of too much tanning bed exposure.

Because the visual of a tanning bed-coffin is easily understood and

interpreted as a gruesome and intense topic, it doesnt need much other

detail surrounding it to be understood. For this reason, I decided to keep the

advertisement simple because the visual of the tanning bed-coffin is

straightforwardly interpreted as a gruesome and intense topic, making

additional information unnecessary in conveying the seriousness of this

message. kept the advertisement simple and included few other facts and

statements within because they are not needed to convey the seriousness of

the message, and I did not want anything else to draw the readers eyes

away from my main focus.

However, I did include a short headline Killer Tan across the top of my

advertisement, using . I used bold and large letters to easily captivate the

eyes of my reader and intentionallyI keepingpt the phraseheadline just short

enough so that the viewer was forced to read it. would not be tempted to

skim over it, but would actually read it. I also created the The

phraseexpression Killer Tan, to be a is also a play on words, suggesting that

because at first glance the reader might believe they are seeing an

advertisement on how they can receive thisthis killer tan, but once looking
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closer at the advertisement they will understand the satire behind the

phrase. I also chose a dark background for the color of my advertisement so

that the audiencereader immediately sees the glow of the tanning bed,

followed by and the brown coffin attached to it. I Bydeliberately choseosing

dark colors instead of bright colors throughout the creation of my

advertisement in hopes that it would reiterate to the reader I was allowing

the reader to understand the heaviness and seriousness of my message. I

also incorporated a clever slogan, If you use the bed to tan, you will end up

a dad man, issuing an unforgettable reminder to ing the viewer of the most

unfortunate serious consequence that comes from frequent tanning bed use

through clever rhyme scheme and heavy word choice.. Though the slogan at

first seemed morbid, I decided that it was a phrase that the audience

wouldnt be able to forget, not only because of its rhyme scheme, but also

because of the message it carries.

At the bottom of my advertisement I included several statistics from

my research regarding risks of cancers that can be contracted from tanning

beds, such as one from the Skin Cancer Foundation which warns teens that,

People who first use a tanning bed before age 35 increase their risk for

melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, by 75 percent. (par.30).

These statistics were placed to help emphasize and reinforce the severity of

the message that the picture had hopefully already exhibited. These I used

the statistics were placed as a back-up method to increase the readers

understanding or belief of the issue in plain language in case if the message

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didnt get across to them clearly enough through my photo. I kept the

statistics in a simple and small fontl in order to not drowncover the entire

advertisement in with words, and I quoted reliable sources that in order ato

added an extra sense of credibility towards my advertisement.

Despite the fact that my advertisement is rather simple and plain, I

based the design off of some of the most successful and popular magazine

advertisements that I had seen in the past, in order to ensure full

effectiveness. My overall goal with the advertisement was to make the photo

so captivating, that even if the viewer decided to read nothing else on my

page, they would still have a striking realization of the dangers of tanning

just by viewing the photo. My hope would be that the photo would spread

throughout the public and would be memorable in the minds of those who

abuse tanning beds, soand that the statistics of those who service these

beds would decrease drastically.

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New Works Cited

"Dangers of Tanning." Melanoma Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr.

2017.

"Indoor Tanning Is Not Safe." Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 24 Jan.

2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017

Rabbitt, Meghan. "Skin Cancer Kills." Women's Health. N.p., 30 May 2014.

Web. 09 Apr. 2017.

"Skin Cancer Foundation." Skin Cancer Facts & Statistics - SkinCancer.org.

N.p., 2 Feb. 2017. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.