Sunburn Art – Are you F-ing Kidding Me?

So, I will say up front, there’s a strong likelihood of salty language in this post.

There is a “trend” of acquiring a sunburn in a pattern and calling it #sunburnart. First of all, I’m going to say this the clearest way possible – these people are idiots. Sunburn is never “art”. Sunburn is skin damage. Sunburn is painful. Sunburn is premature wrinkling. Sunburn is potential precursor to skin cancer. Sunburn is seriously not something that you should actively be trying to acquire.

Maybe I should post a photo of the gash in my leg right after my melanoma was removed, oozing blood and raw stitches and hashtag it #sunburnart. Maybe I should post that and then a disclaimer saying, “You risk this by your idiotic attempt to create art through the use of burning the only skin you’ll ever have.” Is that too harsh?

All of the legitimate news outlets have stories that have cancer experts denouncing the trend. All of the major skin cancer groups say that it’s not, really not, a good idea. And yet, in a Google Search, I found some pages where people were like – oh, this is so cool. I can’t wait to try it this weekend… WTF? With all the information we are exposed to that say that getting too much sun exposure is a bad thing, how can anyone not be aware of the danger of a sunburn? Especially one that is willfully acquired? I mean, even if you are blase about consequences far into the future, doesn’t the pain of a sunburn make these people think – eh, is it really worth the ow factor to impress a bunch of random people I don’t even know?