Opinion The Tattoo

‘Orange girls’ could make beautiful cones

BRISTOL, Connecticut, U.S.A. — Chaos rules in high schools across Bristol as students and teachers run for their lives away from masses of orange alien life forms. With books, papers and pencils flying about from scared students, each schools’ respective principal gets on the intercom and tries his best to calm the fears of his school.

“Attention students: Please do not be frightened by the orange females parading around your school. They are not Oompaloompas, you need not fear for your lives. They are only your misguided fellow students who seem to think that fake, cancer-inducing tans are all the rage. Please return to your classrooms. Thank you for your cooperation, and have a good afternoon.”

Students look around and realize the orange thing they ran away from not more than five minutes before was, indeed, the girl who they sit with in algebra.

Anarchy fades, and the students go back to class.

But the problem still remains.

Around this time of year (prom season) girls all over town go out and sit in a tanning booth so that they will look a fabulous golden brown. They spent lots of money on a prom dress so they insist on not looking pale in it.

Yes, that’s right. In an age were the public is well informed about the causes of skin cancer, we still have teenagers going out and paying to have cancer force fed into their bodies, just to look good on prom night.

Who was it who told these girls (and boys, on occasion) that they were supposed to look tan in early spring in New England? They are only fooling themselves because everyone else knows they paid $20 or so to get a tan that they didn’t even get from the actual real, live sun. No real tan would be that perfect. (Who gets a tan on her butt in a normal situation?)

The ridiculous part of it is that they very rarely come out a perfect golden brown. Most of them come out a nice shade of Oompaloompa orange.

But they do it anyway. Years from now, they will either be dead from skin cancer or severely wrinkled, just so they could look like the perfect tangerine on prom night.

But maybe I’ve been too hard on the teenage Oompaloompa replicas. Perhaps they have been thinking ahead. After all, I did hear that the city was looking for some lively youths to take summer jobs as construction cones.

Amanda Lehmert is a Reporter for Youth Journalism International.

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