> (and hell, likely made you a drain on your hunter-gatherer tribe)

Apparently there are some arguments that having elders around was a boon for prehistoric tribes. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/jul/24/prehistoric-m...

I don't know how much this is validated, but thought it was interesting nonetheless because it seems counter intuitive at first.

>a few years ago scientist had everyone avoiding the sun

I'm somewhat doubtful of this claim. If anything scientists would have everyone avoid sunburn since skin cancer and cataracts.

Tans looking good are a recent phenomenon: A couple hundred years ago light skin was a sign of high status since you could afford to stay indoors instead of having to work in the fields, so light skin was deemed to be more beautiful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Social_status...

Err no. There were specific campaigns that said tans were unhealthy. You still seem to believe this and think that tanned skin only seems attractive due to cultural factors. Are you also going to say that big boobs are only attractive because of cultural factors?

So your personal, cultural instilled, biased intuitions is what drives you? And you think this is more reliably than science? A methodology designed to control for such things, that has brought us antibiotics, vaccines, pretty much all of modern medicine. You know what else feels good? Cocaine, but that doesn't mean it's good for me. The dangers of tanning isn't something invented by colluding scientists and Hawaiian tropic made up to push more sun tan lotion. It's testable and repeatable scientific fact that the sun emits harmful UV radiation that can cause premature aging, cancer etc etc.