New tanning pills appeal only to vanity

I was walking through Wal-Mart the other day, and I couldn't help noticing all of the new spring display cases. They were full of the usual types of things one would expect to be sold in the spring: diet pills, razors, waxing kits, sunscreen, self-tanning oil, etc.
An unusual little box caught my eye on the display with the sunscreen and self-tanning oil. It was a small, white box that said "Elusun: Natural Skin Tanning." I was intrigued by this little box for two reasons. The first was that I had trouble understanding how any tanning product that came in a box from Wal-Mart could possibly create natural skin tanning. I was also confused because the box looked too small to contain a bottle of self-tanning lotion. This caused me to look a little closer, where I noticed in the lower left-hand corner that the box read, "60 capsules."
It was a tanning pill.
Perhaps I'm just way behind, but I had absolutely no idea that a tanning pill actually existed in the world. I heard a rumor about two years ago that this product might develop, but I'm pretty sure I attempted to block that idea out of my memory in desperate hopes that the world would never come to such things. Apparently it has.
I was stunned. I spent the next five minutes standing in Wal-Mart staring at this little box, marveling over the fact that our world has become so vain that people are actually willing to take tanning pills. There could obviously be a good argument made that sun exposure is well-known to cause skin cancer, so this seems like a healthier option. But is it really?
We all know that the sun can cause skin-cancer. That's why we wear sunscreen. That's why we would go to the doctor immediately if we saw any abnormal changes in our skin. We may expose ourselves to some potential danger, but at the very least, we're aware of it. This new tanning pill may not cause melanoma, but it doesn't seem at all healthy to think of taking a pill that will alter the color of my skin. I could be wrong, but it seems that if these pills stay on the market for very long, there will be negative effects found within a few years that we would probably prefer to avoid. Sure, we can possibly avoid greater chances of melanoma by taking a pill instead of being in the sun, but this product is too new for us to have any idea what we'd be doing to our bodies if we took this pill.
My disgust over this idea led me to do some research into the recent sales of these tanning pills. With the assistance of a friend who works for Wal-Mart Corporation, I was able to receive data for the North Georgia area. In and around Atlanta, as is probably the case in many large cities, these pills have been pulled from the shelves entirely. One specific store in metro-Atlanta had them on the shelves for 2-3 weeks, sold one bottle, refunded that bottle, and then removed the product from the store. Yet in stores in smaller towns and more remote locations, these pills are selling like wildfire.
While I was comforted to see that these are not selling in the larger cities, I was still concerned by the number of pills being purchased in many stores outside of the city. I don't know specifically how these pills work, and I doubt anyone knows exactly what the side effects are. I just can't help being very uncomfortable with the idea that we find it so necessary to have a tan that we would spend $20 on a box of pills, not knowing what effects might be on our bodies, or if they will work for us at all. Perhaps these pills won't turn out to be nearly as bad as I fear, but regardless, it seems sad that we want so desperately to have bronzer skin. Seriously, how much more vain can our society be?