\u201cThis kind of advertising does appeal to young people,\u201d Ms Blane said. \u201cParticularly young women from the ages of 15 to 24, we know do engage in a lot more behaviours that lead to skin cancer \u2014 deliberately seeking a tan, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cancer Council has been battling a tan line trend on social media for the past year, with influencers deliberately getting sunburnt to show off bikini lines on darkened skin.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/91a8de2602823811ff0028219d96e491a8ae08b3.jpg\")
Camera IconA billboard on Jarrad St in Cottesloe, on the right as you drive towards Freo, is causing controversy. Gary Ramage Credit: Gary Ramage\/The West Australian<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of imagery shows the kind of behaviour that we\u2019re trying to avoid,\u201d Ms Blane said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of effort over the years has gone into trying to reverse that culture and depiction of tanning, because we know… people will try to emulate what\u2019s on that billboard without quite understanding the context of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Etto founder and chief executive Andrea Horwood said the advertisement had run nationally for many months and this was the first complaint it had received.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a WA company offering a natural solution for people who have had too much exposure to the sun and wind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Etto organic aloe vera with Australian tea tree is an excellent after-sun solution for stressed or damaged skin. We clearly warn of the danger of exposure, and feel it\u2019s a good reminder on your way to the beach to not get sunburnt.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you advertise a solution to a problem, does not mean that you are endorsing the problem \u2014 quite the opposite. Etto offers pure, Australian-made, Australian solutions for life in our harsh climate.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the founder of Invisible Zinc, another WA innovation, the importance of sun protection is close to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Blane said Cancer Council WA was running a State Government-funded campaign aimed at preventing skin cancer, with ads on a bus stop near Cottesloe Beach urging beachgoers to think about sun protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing to see that contradicted in other ways,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While there was nothing wrong with the product itself, she believed advertisers could find healthier ways to promote it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no obligation for advertisers to do that, but we know that increasingly the public is asking for that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt becomes an ethical question. Knowing that we\u2019re the skin cancer capital of the world, two in three Australians are diagnosed with skin cancer in their lifetime \u2014 having that kind of imagery, it\u2019s just not ethical, and it can be damaging as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jean, a local resident who filed an official complaint with advertising regulator Ad Standards, said she had been disappointed to see the billboard depicting the sort of image, which evidence and research showed was unhelpful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a mum of girls and I love to go to the beach \u2014 what I\u2019ve noticed this year is so many young people, boys and girls, who are tanned and tanning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe messages about sun safety don\u2019t seem to be cutting through with this age group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A giant Cottesloe billboard depicting a young woman with crisp white lines standing out starkly on her heavily-tanned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137,46,45],"class_list":["post-416956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-perth","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}