Tanning

Had a pedicure? Pan-fried yourself in a tanning bed? Been zapped by lasers to remove hair from your nether lands? Then you, in all likelihood, have put yourself in harm's way. Before going under the blade for breast implants or a face lift, patients generally do research to make sure their surgeon is properly qualified and knows what to do if problems arise. But people are more cavalier about treatments that seem less invasive. So they put themselves in the hands of strangers with iffy training who lance toes with unsterile tools, wield dangerously powerful rays of light, and sandblast tender skin.

A roly-poly, pipe-smoking snowman, who looks out of place amid recent springlike temperatures, has chilled relations between the owner of a fitness health club and Radnor Township. The 25-foot-high, rubberized snowman, pumped with air and secured by guide lines, is perched atop the roof of Club La Maison at 215 Sugartown Rd. The snowman is visible for miles and evokes chuckles and smiles from passersby, but he is breaking Radnor's zoning code. The township charged that La Maison's proprietor, Richard Sposato, had failed to obtain a permit to display the snowman.

Tanning-facilities regulation merits support Thank you for Lini S. Kadaba's March 24 article, "States see the dark side of teenagers' tans. " Public awareness of increased skin cancer risks from even occasional use of tanning beds is very low. Many customers, particularly youths, are unaware that indoor tanning salons are unregulated and that there is no state law for safety and sanitation inspections. Users risk contracting contagious skin infections as well as skin and eye damage from ultraviolet radiation.

Here comes Memorial Day weekend, Sun Bunny. Time to head for Bakery Beach to fricassee your frame. Gotta get that wheat-toast look, right? Burnt is beautiful, right? Wrong, Sun Bunny. New ideas about tanning are abroad on the beaches and, basically, the word for this summer is: Cool it. A recent report by the National Institutes of Health says suntans can lead to skin cancer, a weakened immune system and skin that wrinkles and ages before its time. All forms of tanning are potentially hazardous to your health, there is no such thing as a healthy tan and tanning is visible evidence of injury to the skin, the NIH report concluded.

YUPPIE DISEASE. More than half of those saying they suffered chronic fatigue actually had undiagnosed mental illness, a new study reports. Epstein- Barr virus (EBV), which causes mononucleosis, has been suspected as the primary cause of chronic fatigue, the fourth most common complaint of patients seeing internists and the seventh most common among those seeing family doctors. But University of Connecticut researchers found that only 15 percent of 100 subjects showed any signs of EBV infection, and that those with such signs also suffered a mental illness, such as depression or panic disorder.

Now that the National Endowment for the Arts is busy funding with our tax dollars every kinky kind of expression imaginable, one would think no form of speech or expression is now forbidden. But one would be wrong. Take the case of two Seattle restaurant workers fired for trying to persuade a pregnant customer not to order an alcoholic beverage. Danita Fitch and G.R. Heryford were dismissed after the customer complained the employees were reluctant to serve her an alcoholic drink.

THINK THERE'S nothing new under the sun, beautywise? That all you have to do to pretty up your skin after months of hiding it under heavy sweaters is to slap on a little sunscreen? Oh, honey. Where have you been? From drugstore to department store, beauty innovations abound. It's time to throw out those bottles of summer necessities from yesteryear and get with the new. Umbrellas in a bottle Did you know that one week of baking on the beach equals a year of the incidental sun exposure you get walking around or driving?

When a Woodbury woman won the Artistic Pie-Eating Contest here last week by fashioning the likeness of an umbrella from an unremarkable Tastykake lemon pie, do you think she did it any old way? And when a Pennsylvania man froze out 39 competitors two weeks ago to claim the title in this resort town's second annual Ice Cube Melting Contest, do you think he melted that cube exactly as he pleased? No, no, no. No, they followed rules as explicit, as strict and as off-center as the city-sponsored competitions themselves.

"I don't do pets," declares Tony Baratta, professional taxidermist. He doesn't do foxes, either: too delicate, too much "ridiculous" hard work, and too little money. "I mainly do deer heads," says Baratta, whose eponymous shop has been a Haddon Avenue fixture for 25 years. "They're what I do best. If you do 2,000 of anything, you get good at it. " Amid the hip eateries of downtown Collingswood, wood-paneled Baratta's Taxidermy is an anomaly - and a reminder that multicultural community can mean many things.

Think of it as a sports bar crossed with Vidal Sassoon. Or a tasteful Hooters for hair. That's how Cherry Hill fashion designer Leah Major sees her newest business - the Men's Locker Room, a hair salon that aims at pampering men. The salon, which opened on Haddonfield Road in October, features women stylists. The walls are covered in sports memorabilia, such as the jerseys of Philadelphia Eagle Ty Detmer and Flyer Eric Lindros. Each hair-cutting station has its own television with a cable feed and remote control - so the men can watch their favorite sports events, channel-surf as much as they want, and switch between the game and MTV. Haircuts are fast - the customer is usually out in 30 minutes.

Fully two-thirds of the states restrict teens' access to tanning beds, so New Jersey joined the public-health mainstream this month when Gov. Christie signed a welcome ban on indoor tanning for anyone under 17. Pennsylvania officials should follow suit by acting on similar legislation just proposed in Harrisburg. It's long past time for both states to protect teens - especially high-school-age girls - from the well-documented risk of skin cancer from misuse of commercial tanning facilities.

Gov. Christie has signed legislation that bars anyone under 17 from using tanning beds in New Jersey and anyone under 14 from getting a spray tan. The measure signed Monday night allows 17-year-olds to use a tanning salon provided their parent or guardian accompanies them on their first visit and gives their consent. The legislation was developed after a North Jersey mother was charged with child endangerment in April 2012 for allegedly bringing her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth.

LAST WEEK, City Council dealt with zoning issues and discussed looming school closures, but on Thursday the legislative body takes on a new controversial issue: tanning beds. The indoor-tanning industry has come under fire recently after the American Suntanning Association tried to dispute that tanning raises the risk of skin cancer. To make indoor tanning aficionados aware of the risks, Councilman Bill Greenlee will introduce a bill that would require a minor to be accompanied by an adult when tanning at a salon.

Less than 10 minutes after making a game-winning, three-point play with two seconds remaining in overtime, Josh Borrelli was out the door of the Timber Creek gymnasium. He couldn't stick around to celebrate with his Shawnee teammates. He couldn't savor his role - a game-high 23 points, including all eight of his team's points in overtime - in the Renegades' 47-44 victory on Thursday night. He had to get to the tanning salon. "It's tough sometimes," Borrelli said later on Thursday night.

Editor's Note: Due to a technical error, a feature story on the MTV program "Jersey Shore" that was written by Yvonne Villarreal of the Los Angeles Times appeared briefly on philly.com as a column written by Chuck Darrow of the Philadelphia Daily News. LOS ANGELES - Like a tan growing pale, "Jersey Shore" is fading into the TV sunset. Thursday marks the beginning of its sixth season - its last. It began as just another low-budget MTV reality show, with lower expectations, that would chronicle the fist-pumping antics of its ultra-bronzed, ultra-average stars cooped up in a house in Seaside Heights, N.J. But when the series aired in December 2009, it quickly and curiously morphed into a surprisingly potent pop force that made "Snooki" a household name and turned an unknown cast into late-night punch lines.

Pisey Tan, who lost both legs in Iraq, one above the knee, the other below, stands on a corner in Manayunk, trying to clip into his pedal. He is on a 25-mile bike ride. He grabs his left calf, or what would have been his left calf but is now a prosthetic leg, and guides his shoe onto the pedal. He pushes hard on his prosthetic knee, trying to get the shoe to click into the pedal. It slides off. He repeats, then tries again and again. The only sounds are of his own heavy breathing, his curses of frustration and determination under his breath, the traffic on Umbria Street whizzing by, and encouragement from Tyl Sadoff, a fellow rider whom he calls "my drill sergeant.

Just because you're a woman of color doesn't mean you're blessed with perfect, miniskirt-worthy skin. That's the basis behind Rittenhouse Square makeup artist Ursula Augustine's latest offering - Golden Stockings, a sugar-based airbrush tanning system that gives legs a sheer panty-hose sparkle. Augustine uses the tanning spray on women of all ethnicities, but, she says, her more frequent customers are brown-skinned ladies in search of beautiful, bronze limbs. "My legs had such a nice, even tone," said Chi-Chi Enigwe, a 5-foot-10-inch Mount Airy publicist the color of dark chocolate who tans so she can rock white hot pants with pride.

TRENTON — New Jersey is looking at tightening restrictions on the use of tanning beds by young people under a bill that would bar anyone under 18 from using them. The Assembly's Women and Children Committee passed the measure Monday by a 5-0 vote, though two members abstained. It now heads to the full Assembly for consideration, but it's not known when a vote will be held. The bill would expand a 2006 state law that bans tanning-bed use by anyone under 14 and requires written parental consent for those 14 to 17. The bill would allow for spray or sunless tanning for children 14 to 17 with parental consent.

When Jessica Lilley was 15, she made her debut at a tanning salon. The shopkeeper who had sold her the ivory silk gown that she would wear in a beauty pageant insisted that the blue-eyed blonde would look even more fabulous with a good tan. For the next few days, Lilley kept imagining herself bronzed and beautiful. So, despite her mother's vigorous protests, she headed for the nearest salon. "There were more tanning salons in my town of Belmont, Miss., than there were grocery stores," she says, "so it felt totally normal to me. " People at the pageant complimented Lilley on how healthy and glamorous she looked, as though she had just returned from a beach vacation.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Since it started up in April, the San Francisco digital-publishing site www.Byliner.com has specialized in long-form-narrative nonfiction. It has compiled quite an archive - more than 60,000 pieces by more than 4,000 writers. Now, Byliner has broadened its scope to include fiction, and it drafted novelist Amy Tan ( Joy Luck Club ) to write its inaugural offering, her 14,000-word Rules for Virgins . This is the first piece of fiction Tan has published in six years, since Saving Fish From Drowning . Rules is described as "the sensual tale of an aging master courtesan instructing her beautiful young prótegée in the ways of love and business in 1912 Shanghai.