The New Jersey mother who was arrested for taking her 5 year old daughter to a tanning salon is now the topic of discussion which centers around her very own sun-kissed complexion, raising concerns that she may suffer from “tanerexia.”
44 year old Patricia Krentcil was charged with child endangerment for her tanning salon accusation, but bailed out of jail for the amount of $25,000.
“The little girl went to school and reported she had these burns and that caused the school to contact authorities,” says Katherine Carter, spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the extremely tan 44 year old New Jersey mother, when she took her 5 year old daughter to the tanning salon, she only stood in the room, but never actually entered the booth where the tanning process takes place.
“I never once in my life would let my daughter, especially at that age, go into a tanning booth” proclaims Krentcil to Good Morning America .
The toasty mother contends that the burns that her daughter suffered were from an afternoon spent gardening just the day before.
“It’s very wrong to presume something that didn’t happen, because it didn’t happen,” Krentcil said, adding that all if the attention from the media made it seem “all of a sudden like I was a murderer.”
However, the national attention quickly shifted to the actual appearance of Krentcil after her GMA appearance, raising concerns about her addiction to tanning.
“When you look at this, this is somebody who has a problem who most likely has a condition called “tanerexia,” where they just don’t realize just how much color they have,” New York dermatologist Doris Day said. “She’s at higher risk for skin cancer, and it also doesn’t send the right message to her child.”
“Obviously, she tans,” says Krentcil’s lawyer John Caruso. “To call her an addict, I think is a real leap. It feels like it’s being exaggerated, to be like, ‘Well look at her, she must have done this.’”
Do you think that the NJ Tanning Mom suffers from “tanerexia”?