Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 30, 2014

In New York, a city run tanning clinic is the Great Lawn on a warm sunny day.

I’ve always wondered why Zonker doesn’t go ‘au natural’ …

He still looks pink to me…

In college in the fifties, a tan by the end of April was required attire on campus. Last month I had my eleventh skin cancer removed.

So, Zonk has to have community-funded tanning clinics for 15 days a year? Since the 350 cloudless days should all be free.

I was born with a tan and avoid the sun — doing my running at night. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen…”

Later in the strip Zonker does a series of anti-tanning Public Service announcements to atone for his, well, his tone, or is that to atan for his tan?

When I was a teen some kids were teasing me about being so pale. I lifted up my shirt and placed my arm against my stomach. They couldn’t believe just how dark my arms were compared to areas that never saw the sun. My sister is a brunette who tans easily. I have never been able to do it. (We have different dads, so heredity may be partially to blame).

I read all of the “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In one of the books the mother commented that Laura needed to keep her bonnet on otherwise her skin would turn dark. Back then apparently the fairer your skin the better the breeding.

Meanwhile, Californians are still living with the malignant after affects of 1978’s Prop 13: bad public schools and other public institutions & infrastructure that are shadows of what they were 40 years ago. Worse yet, my property taxes are high. (The original intent of Prop 13 was to protect people as old as I am now.)

@Fontanelle: what Prop 13 did gradually over time was to shift nearly all the property tax burden off businesses and onto residences. It badly needs to be overhauled. Meantime, I once got a sunburn so bad (I was never going to tan, no matter how in it was to) that if you touched my skin, it bled. Which is why I ended up with an inch and a half circle carved out of the center top of my scalp and the permanent hair loss to go with it—and I’m a woman with long hair. But at least the cancer’s gone.

Sure they do.They know.

@fontanelle, I was a kid in CO when Prop 13 happened and so this strip meant nothing to me, but now that I’ve been in CA for twenty-mumble years and have two school-age kids, this strip is very painful, and not just because of sunburn memories!

In what universe?

@Liverlips McCrackenThere is a 10% excise tax for indoor tanning. that was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act.

For the last couple of decades, my goal has always been to be the same colour in late September as I was in early May. Never been successful. Always ended up with some ‘colour’, but never could call it a real tan.