THIS MORNING IN an interview with the Irish Mirror, Instagram star and former Miss Ireland Roz Purcell said that she really regrets taking sunbeds when she was younger.
Purcell, whose sister Rachel was diagnosed with leukemia in 2016, told the paper:
I was very stupid when I was younger and I did sunbeds and I’m very open about the fact I did that.
The 28-year-old added that she’s totally aware that she “let vanity overrule [her] health in the future.” She advised young women who look up to her to just wear fake tan, as “it’s amazing now. Ten years ago it was shite, but now it is so good.” Indeed, fake tan has come a long, long way since the days of Bebo (but the poor quality of it didn’t stop people wearing it back then, either).
Unless you have some kind of skin condition, there’s really no justifiable reason why you wouldn’t choose fake tan over a sunbed. And even in the case of a skin condition, it’s better to just go without either (unless you’re prescribed a treatment using UV rays – and even then, it’s really not recommended. Beaumont Hospital’s consultant dermatologist Dr. Gillian Murphy has been advising against it for more than two decades).
Aside from Roz Purcell, there are plenty of people who are more than willing to share their stories of regret and sunbeds. Every couple of months, there’s someone going viral on Facebook talking about getting skin cancer at a ridiculously early age, and how their temporary tan wasn’t worth the damage caused later. There’s so much testimony online from people who previously used sunbeds and want the rest of us to learn from their mistakes. If you’re still ignoring it in 2019, you’ll probably never learn. So, on that note…