Somewhere between "clean eating" and "this crystal will fix your cortisol," the wellness world quietly snuck in another one: red light tanning beds. Safe tanning! Skin-protecting rays! All the glow, none of the guilt! Sounds amazing, right? Yeah, about that.
Refinery29's Sun Blocked series - a no-shame, no-lectures deep dive into the real dangers of tanning - is pulling back the curtain on this particular trend, and the findings are not exactly a vibe.
"It protects your skin" - if only
The series features a 19-year-old named Crisiant who uses a red light tanning bed regularly and genuinely believes she's doing her skin a favour. Her reasoning? Red light is the opposite of UV, so it must be protective. It's a logical-sounding conclusion that is, unfortunately, not how any of this works.
This is the sneaky genius of the red light tanning bed marketing machine. It borrows credibility from legitimate red light therapy - which does have some studied benefits for things like wound healing and inflammation - and casually slides it over to cover an entirely different use case. Tanning. In a bed. With your skin baking under it.
The wellness-to-scam pipeline is very real
This is a pattern worth paying attention to. Take something with a kernel of scientific legitimacy, repackage it with aspirational branding, aim it at people who are (reasonably!) trying to avoid the very real dangers of UV exposure, and charge them for the privilege of feeling responsible about their choices.
The irony is brutal. People are turning to red light tanning beds because they've heard tanning is dangerous. The marketing meets that concern halfway - and then leads them right back into a tanning bed anyway.
What actually matters here
The Sun Blocked series is clear about its mission: no shame, just facts. And the facts are worth sitting with. There is no such thing as a safe tan, full stop. The mechanism that creates a tan - your skin producing melanin in response to damage - is the same regardless of how the damage is marketed to you.
Red light therapy used in clinical or cosmetic contexts is a different beast entirely from lying in a tanning bed with red bulbs and walking out bronzed. If you're glowing after a session, something is still happening to your skin. And "something is happening" is not the same as "this is good for you."
The wellness industry is very good at making you feel like you've done your research when you've actually just done their marketing for them. This is one of those times to put on SPF, step away from the bed, and be a little suspicious of anything that promises a tan without consequences.
