Tanning Beds Give Off Northern Light

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 14, 1998 | by Stephen Goode

The very opportunity to get a major tan becomes a big thing in the Far North, particularly in the small town of Iqaluit on Baffin Island, just south of the Arctic Circle. It's especially the case during those long winter months -- stretching from the first of December to the end of March -- when the sun sets at the very early hour of 3 p.m., having been around only since late morning.

According to a dispatch from Reuters, the owners of the two tanning beds in tiny Iqaluit (population: 2,333) say an impressive tan has become the goal of many locals. "I think we need it. We live in houses here, not igloos," Isabelle Benoit, owner of the Fantasy Palace Tanning Salon of Iqaluit, told the news agency.

And just down the street Suzanne Laliderte, operator of the Baffin Island Hair Studio, which also sports a tanning bed, told Reuters that what her customers frantically seek is exposure to the bright indoor lights that the bed offers, a way to escape the drab, dull, dark and very, very cold outdoors that's just a wall away.

Indeed, Laliderte said the salon is popular even with the native Inuit, whose tribal members come in to bask under the bright light and eat ice-cream cones. (Yes, she told Reuters, you can sell ice cream in the Arctic to Eskimos!) And according to Benoit, some of her regular customers are members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who find themselves stationed in the town, far from their homes further south.