Kim K’s In-Office Sunbed Is Quite Irresponsible, Isn’t It?

Cast your mind back to the early 2000s.

Frosted tips were all the rage. The Kaiser Chiefs were in the charts. Low rise jeans ruled runways. Everyone was doing sun beds.

Self tanning wasn’t once was it is now. Nourishing serums, gorgeous creams, and bronzed lotions were yet to rule the beauty aisles. Instead, people were popping down to their local tanning salon, hopping in a bed for a few minutes, and severely damaging their skin in the process.

Sun beds have long been a point of contention in the beauty world. It wasn’t long after their explosion onto the scene that we began to learn of their dangers. They caused cancer, they were addictive, they were being used by teenagers who craved a base before going on holidays.

The word ‘tanorexic’ regularly appeared on the pages of tabloids, as young women (and sometimes kids) admitted to using sunbeds more than recommended and more than what was safe. People started getting ill. The risks involved in a ‘quick tan’ became obvious.

@kimkardashian♬ original sound – Kim Kardashian

That’s why when Kim Kardashian shared a video of the SKKN office on TikTok recently, declaring: “I’m Kim Kardashian, of course I have a tanning bed” people weren’t all that impressed.

After all, a celebrity as influential as a Kardashian boasts a lot of social clout. People listen to them even when they just want to jump on a viral trend and don’t necessarily want to be listened to. They create trends, they change opinions, they, no doubt, encourage a lot of people to start doing sun beds when they post about sun beds on social media.

Tanning beds are dangerous – we all know this. The process exposes the skin to large amounts of UV rays that not only age the skin considerably, but also increase your risk of developing skin cancer (the fastest growing cancer here in Ireland).

In fact, according to the Irish Cancer Society, just one session on a sun bed is enough to increase your risk of developing squamous cell skin cancer by 67% and basal cell skin cancer by 29%.

Final Destination

And look, Kim K’s not a monster. She’s actually done lots of good things in recent years.

She’s donated millions of dollars to homeless and women’s shelters across the US. She’s en route to hopefully becoming a lawyer. She introduced a nipple bra to raise awareness of climate change and inadvertently created a product perfect for women undergoing breast cancer related surgeries.

She isn’t actively hoping that everyone will go get a sun bed and therefore increase their risk of developing skin cancer – she’s just showing off. But her newest brand, SKKN, is all about skincare. At the very least, boasting about a sun bed doesn’t really align with the brand’s values. At the most, it’s completely irresponsible, and really quite dangerous.

If we’re expecting Kim Kardashian to consistently maintain an online identity that is health conscious, responsible, and totally in line with the values of people who don’t have the means to install a sun bed in their office, then we’re only fooling ourselves.

The Kardashians may be out of touch, always on, imperfectly curated mega-stars, but they’re also human beings (yes, really). They’re going to make mistakes, they’re bound to promote the wrong brands, they’re almost certainly going to piss at least one person in their comment sections off, no matter how banal the post.

But this time, unfortunately, Kim’s casual inclusion of her tanning bed in a TikTok has pissed a lot of people off – and hey, listen, rightly so.

Nipple bras? Goals. Sun beds in the office? Not so much.

• health
• Kim Kardashian