“Does she seriously think that she looks good???? Yuck”
“It’s like those ladies at the beach or pool who wear bikini’s and their fat it bulging out and yet they think they look good! Good enough to appear day after day like that! Ladies, think of how many eyes you are hurting!!! Lol.”
“She looks so ridiculous…cowhide, leather, beef jerkey, lost at sea…exactly. Attractive…NOT!!! She truly looks like she is in her sixties. Whether she actually brought the child into the tanning bed or not, she is a terrible role model. She needs some psychiatric help to get over that obsession with tanning.”
Although I am not the biggest fan of perpetuating harmful ideas in order to make a point, I am just about to do that. Even though I find the above comments repulsive and upsetting, I think it is important to pull them away from the Facebook context and to put them on here so that our blog readers can consider what they have been seeing on Facebook.
The above comments are in regards to the recent story about the mother who had her young daughter use a tanning bed even though it is against the law. I will be honest, I do not know a lot about this story, perhaps I would have read more about it if I hadn’t seen these comments on Facebook bashing her. I am not defending her actions, but I also want nothing to do with condemning her either, I don’t know her.
However….
If I were to take the route of acting like I know something about this woman, I would say that it does appear that she has some sort of disorder, maybe an addiction. If we look at the story through this perspective I wonder if these people who made the above comments would be saying the same kind of things. Let’s replace the addiction of tanning with alcohol. Would this public speculation even make sense anymore? Because of the physical marker of this disorder, people feel that they are able to openly comment of the “unsightly” nature of it. Then again, maybe these same people think alcoholics are disgusting too. The physical aspect of this disorder mixed with the chance to criticism a woman in her role of being a mother has created a Facebook freak show frenzy. How about we all do ourselves a favor and think before we post?
Unruly Bodies 
I feel like it’s difficult to mediate the moral / social conventions we address these issues with without trying to distance ourselves from the issue at hand. I read a bit about the woman and it is apparent there is something going on with her that makes this action problematic – either she has a mental addiction to the tanning, or attention, or behavioral responses – something. But when this gets put on a public forum it becomes a spectacle to discuss. Issues with the body are easily sensationalized – how many memes have we seen regarding girls doing the duck face? – but there is an inherent judgement that is made when we disregard other bodies as inappropriate. In that judgement, we are able to validate that we are treating our bodies in a better way and elect ourselves judges for other non-normative bodies.
I agree that it’s wrong to judge this lady or condemn her publicly. It isn’t necessary. However, I do feel that if she has an addiction then she should seek help. And her child’s welfare is the most important thing in this situation. Laws are typically made for a reason, usually to protect us as citizens. This child is fairly helpless because we all are at that age; it is the responsibility of our parents to protect us and make sure we are raised to be healthy. Some sort of action should be taken within the parameters of the law. However, that does not give people the right to bash her on social networking sites. It doesn’t solve anything. I do understand the controversy though because it is a young child who, in the viewpoints of most, is helpless.
I agree with your statement about how u may suspect the mother to have some sort of addition. I recently saw a video clip of her on AOL. Com and she kept slurring her words and was unbalanced throughout the whole video. It’s quite disturbing thinking that a mother would subject her child to tanning at such a young age.