To a crisp

Gay and bisexual men use indoor tanning beds at a rate three to six times higher than heterosexual men and, probably not by coincidence, they're about twice as likely to develop skin cancer, according to WebMD.com. That was determined by researchers at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, who sifted through state and federal data on about 78,500 straight men and more than 3,000 gay and bisexual men. They found that heterosexual men face about a 3 percent risk of skin cancer, compared with nearly 7 percent among men in the sexual minority. Why the trend? It's simple. The researchers pointed to similar studies of young white women—the demographic most likely to use tanning beds—which concluded that enhancing appearance is the most likely motivation behind using the machines.