The perfect tan. Hours of each day devoted to the sun. Visits to tanning salons on cloudy days. For many sun worshippers, a golden tan is the currency of beauty. Currently Miss Tidewater, aspiring to win the coveted title of Miss Maryland, Brittany Lietz is a young woman who once aspired to having the perfect tan in the belief it would win her more beauty pageants. At only 20 years of age, her perfect tan turned into a diagnosis of skin cancer. Lietz has been using her celebrity position as a beauty pageant winner as a platform for raising awareness of the dangers associated with too much sun exposure. She is speaking to high school students at their schools and manning booths at health fairs to warn others her age that the cost of a golden glow is too high a price to pay when you put yourself in harm's way. She has a white scar running across the back of her right rib cage, and she has had 20 other moles removed since she was first diagnosed with melanoma. These days, she uses self-tanning sprays to achieve the look of a tan because a tan is still an asset when you compete in beauty pageants. A pump-spray tan is as close as she wants to be to the sun.
"To me, being tan is not worth losing my life over," she said. "I'm going to be pale and that's who I am."
