Ok, this story is pretty messed up.
A woman in the US has been arrested for allegedly taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning salon where her skin was burned.
News outlets in the US initially reported Patricia Krentcil’s daughter was burned from a stint in a tanning bed, after she turned up at school and told her classmates she “went tanning with Mummy.” Mummy is a chronic sunbed tanner, as you can see and her daughter had sunburn-type burns on her body. The girl’s father claims a teacher incorrectly put the two together and contacted police.
But the mother – who admits to tanning all her life – is denying the allegations and says her daughter was simply in the tanning room while she was in the booth. She said the 5-year-old’s sunburn is just coincidental. She told US’s NBC “I tan, she doesn’t tan.” “I’m in the booth, she’s in the room. That’s all there is to it.”
Have a look at the video. No really, HAVE A LOOK:
Right, so let’s unpack this a little bit. I think we can all agree that Patricia (the mother) is quite taken with tans. Aesthetically, she prefers her own skin to be very (very very) brown. Whether she applies that same aesthetic to her daughter is another question – in this case, a question for police.
But it did make me think about how (consciously or unconsciously), we do project our own aesthetic preferences onto our loved ones. The degree to which we do this varies. It might be as simple as buying a new shirt as a ‘gift’ for a partner because you prefer that look to the vintage ACDC t-shirts he’s so fond of. Or it might be about buying a girlfriend a birthday present of a necklace you really like.