A woman travelled with three of her friends to Alicante, Spain, and shared before-and-after snaps of their tans on their return – but people were left with the same concern
A group of Brit holidaymakers have been slammed online after sharing before-and-after snaps of their tans following a trip to sunny Spain. Lizzy Pittaway and three of her pals travelled to Alicante for five nights – plenty of time, it seems, to have caught some nasty sunburns.
Prior to jetting off, the group posed at the airport to show their pre-holiday skin colour as they stood in front of a Boots store. Then, on their return to the UK, they repeated the pose to show off the effects of the sun. Lizzy, from West London, shared the before-and-after video to TikTok, which quickly went viral with 895,000 views and 800 comments.
Many of those who commented criticised the ladies’ newfound “red” look, however.
“You were in Boots, why didn’t you buy sun cream?” one TikTok user asked in response.
Another person asked: “Tan or burn?” A third urged: “Girlies wear sunscreen. The locals feel bad for you when you walk around red as a lobster. It looks painful. I say this as a white as a ghost Spanish girl, skin cancer is not a joke.”
Meanwhile a fourth offered kinder feedback, declaring: “Looks like you had a very good time.”
In response to the backlash, Lizzy said: “We did use factor 50 sun cream consistently. And the lighting makes us look way redder than we actually were.”
She told What’s The Jam: “This has been a trend on TikTok for a while now so we thought it would be a bit of fun for when we went on holiday. We posted several TikToks while out in Alicante, including outfit checks each evening, but for some reason this one just blew up.”
The 21-year-old continued: “I think mostly because people were shocked and outraged by the video, not necessarily because they liked it. Whilst she explained that she posted the video “without too much focus” when their return flight home was delayed.
“I posted it while we were waiting at the airport and it wasn’t until the next day when I was like, ‘Whoa, this has actually gone quite big’,” she admitted. “The reaction was very mixed – friends and family thought it was quite funny and light-hearted, which was our motivation behind posting it.
“But then it started to get picked up by Spanish people, which is where most of the views and comments came from. They were quick to judge us and say that we were all sunburnt, don’t know how to use sun cream, and are going to get skin cancer.”
Lizzy added: “While I completely understand the dangers of sunburn and skin cancer, we were all extremely cautious on holiday. We even did a pre-order at Boots prior to the holiday that we picked up at the airport, mostly made up of sun creams.
“Some of the comments were restricted because they were quite harsh. Luckily, I am able to take the comments and they haven’t affected me too much as I know the truth behind the video. But for some, many of these comments could be damaging, as people don’t often consider that there is someone on the other side receiving them. There was also a lot of division within the comments section with many people arguing among themselves.”
While the university student and her pals covered themselves in cream every day, she admitted that “a few of us did get a little bit sunburnt”.
“But nothing unusual that we hadn’t experienced before,” she stated. “We were continually applying sun cream and were in the shade or pool for most of the day.
“I would say that it is quite hard to avoid getting a little bit sunburnt when visiting another country and trying to explore the area. We did try to stay inside or in the shade when it got to the highest UV levels in the day and apply extra factor 50 sun cream to be safe.”
Lizzy closed: “In no way did we intend for the video to promote getting sunburnt as obviously that is not cool and can be seriously dangerous. When we posted it, we obviously knew that we weren’t as sunburnt as the video made out and so didn’t think much of it.”
“But the labelling of us as ‘guiris’, which I initially didn’t know the meaning of, is untrue as we were up to date with how to stay safe in Spain.”