Inside the Weird New World of Peptide Tanning
As far as subcultures go, bodybuilding is a famously tan one. Initially, Ken “Skip” Hill’s regimen was no different from that of other guys in the circuit. Supplementing tanning bed sessions with regular sun exposure secured him a solid char that helped contour his hard-earned muscles. “Brown fat looks better than white fat,” Hill explained. It was 1985, and the goal was to look like David Lee Roth, the lithe and atomically sun-kissed frontman of the hair metal band Van Halen. “I could sound like a Neanderthal,” Hill says from his current home in Southern Florida, where he works as a professional trainer, “but the muscle thing in my teenage years was: girls. The tan, for some reason, was every bit as important.” In 2006, Hill was introduced, through other bodybuilders, to a peptide that stimulates melanin production, allowing users to achieve a much deeper tan with less sun exposure. “A lot of us are our own guinea pigs,” he said. Along with visits to the tanning bed, the peptide, called Melanotan-II, gave him the …
