The whites are at it again! But now there's some validity behind people obsessed with tanning after a dermatologist on TikTok confirmed that “tanning dysmorphia” could be categorized under body dysmorphic disorder or BDD.


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This discussion came about after a TikTok video from @bright.eyesss went viral. The creator used a popular pale TikTok filter saying it was supposed to “cure tanning dysmorphia.” After removing the ghostly filter (which doesn’t look to be available anymore on TikTok), she likes her natural skin tone. It's tanned enough.

 

 “I look like I just got back from the beach,” she exclaims.



Tanning dysmorphia (at least in the way the TikToks are defining it) is when you obsess over not being tanned enough leading you to overuse products like tanning lotion and spending a dangerous amount of time out in the sun or in tanning beds.


But the commenters on @bright.eyesss’s video were perplexed by her equating wanting to be tan to a mental health disorder like body dysmorphia.


“We just adding the word dysmorphia to anything now,” one person comments.


When asked about tanning dysmorphia by one commenter, @bright.eyesss replied saying “I learned the term in high school when I would lay in the tanning bed every day lol.”


While many scoffed at the term, Dr. Joyce Park, a board-certified dermatologist going by @teawithmd on TikTok, stitched the video saying tan dysmorphia is very much a real thing and not at all made up.



In the video, Dr. Park cites a 2006 study that looked at tanning in regard to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).


 “This study looked at 200 people with BDD and found that ¼ of them had tanning-related BDD. Interestingly these patients were actually tanning because they wanted to camouflage their skin. They thought by darkening their ‘pale’ skin, they can make ‘uneven’ or ‘blotchy’ skin a more even color,” Dr. Park states.


The reactions to Dr. Park’s comments were a mixed bag. Some found the study interesting while some were still calling it bullshit.


“That actually makes sense on why some people get addicted to tanning their skin. Thanks, I never knew” says one commenter. “Tanorexia is real,” joked another.


The more you know, I guess.


Still, the tanning dysmorphia discourse is relatively new online and while it might have some serious effects, on the outside, it does look like white women making up a new form of beauty standard oppression.