A personal story and philosophical essay, “Ultra violet” by Margaux Cassan dissects tanning as a “total social fact” by retracing the story of her mother. With this book, the author carries out a sociological, religious and mythological rereading of exposure to the sun, revisiting the myth of Icarus.
When “a small purple spot, slightly rounded” appears on the top of the forehead of Gabrielle, the author’s mother, it is death knocking at the door of this tanning enthusiast. In the 1980s, the “Rastignac of the sun” were the masters of the world, they had the wind in their sails, everything was successful for them. Gabrielle, too, wants to be part of it.
At fifty years old, mother had not escaped it. She was roasted, she was ready. It was the logical culmination of a lifetime of chasing rays.
To retrace the story of her mother and her obsession, the author immerses herself in her own history, but also in that of exposure to the sun, of which she carries out a sociological, religious and mythological rereading. It is the myth of Icarus and the intimate association with the ball of fire, until the fusion and disappearance, that she revisits. She also does not fail to recall how sunbathing and sanatoriums were common therapeutic medical practices which found, in part, their origins in Switzerland.
The bactericidal sun, the sun synonymous with life, strength and full health, confers superpowers. Before becoming an agent of accelerating aging and serious health dangers now recognized. But nothing calms the sons and daughters of the sun: to tan is to undergo a change, including social change, at the same time as a quest for identity.
The myth of the tanned man
To understand her mother, Margaux Cassan also explores her genealogy. She crosses the ring road and goes to question Jeanne, her grandmother, in Val-de-Marne. This recomposition of the maternal lineage allows the granddaughter to grasp the intensity of the will with which her mother wanted to break away from her original environment.
Leave the suburbs, become a true Parisian, intramural, attend literary festivals where you meet Jean-Paul Enthoven, Jack Lang, Jacques Séguéla and other stars with a complexion similar to yours, or even go to the Red City in Africa from the North, where these “Rastignac du soleil”, as the author calls them, meet.
This total abandonment to the ray of the supreme star is synonymous with a form of omnipotence and freedom to free oneself from the weak and the weak. Philosophically and physically, the superman is a tanned man, he is a disciple of swarthy Nietzsche and relegates the pale Kant.
Ultra violent ultraviolet
The addiction is there. When the sun goes out, the tanning machine takes over. Darkening your skin becomes an obsession which results in this innocuous phrase that the author’s mother keeps repeating to her daughter every time she checks in on her: “My darling, you were still able to enjoy the sun ?” Will the author be able to escape it, or will she also become a tanorexic, a name given to those who develop a form of pathological dependence on tanning, to the point of adopting behaviors at risk?
We hit a child, we insult him, but when we sun him, do we harm him?
Finally, if Margaux Cassan chooses to write her title “Ultra violet” in two words, it is to emphasize the proximity to ultra violence. During her first UV session in the tanning machine, the author, then a teenager, goes so far as to wonder if forcing a tan on a child is not a form of abuse.
With “Ultra Violet”, we learn as much about the intimacy and family history of the author as about our relationships as children of Icarus with the star which, so to speak, symbolizes both our beginning and our end.
Céline O’Clin/ld
Margaux Cassan, “Ultra violet”, Grasset editions, October 2024.
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