It’s called Sunburn Challenge and it is the latest fashion that goes crazy among the boys: staying under the sun until you get an evident burning, to be shown on social networks as a resistance trophy. A practice that, behind the appearance of a summer game, hides much deeper and risky implications.
The body as a visibility tool
The psychologist Lucia Daniela Bosa, an expert in the service for dependencies and alcology, has defined this phenomenon as “desecrating use of the body”, a behavior that mixes self -harm, search for visibility and addiction mechanisms. A challenge that is not limited to physical pain, but becomes a symbol of a compulsive need for recognition.
In a psychoanalytic key, the scholar Massimo Recalcati, in his “vacuum clinic”, highlighted how certain attitudes arise from the anesthesia of desire, from the need to fill a sense of lack with strong experiences. In this context, the sunburn becomes a sort of “replacement container”: it marks the body and reminds those who show it and who observes it that it exists, which is visible.
Behind fashion, deep fragility
The psychologist Cosentino Marco Piccolo underlines other aspects that emerge by observing the phenomenon:
-The body as an unconscious message: those who participate in the Sunburn Challenge could perceive their body not as an integral part of the self, but as a separate object on which to exercise power. A fracture that has its roots in non -safe attachment relationships, until it turns into an “unconscious attack” to those who gave a body but not love.
-Ebitionism and protest: the scald must be visible, almost to challenge the “moral super-ego” of Freudian memory, but what little one calls “super-medical super-ego”. After the pandemic, the new dominant social precept is not so much “not to sin” but “protect your health”: the wound then becomes an act of rebellion.
-Adgenerational female Indiamics: the phenomenon mainly concerns girls. Today many mothers maintain typical adolescent behaviors, such as the search for physical approval or the implicit competition with the daughters. In this context, the Sunburn Challenge can become a way to seek attention, recognition or to stand out from the mother.
A sign that leaves the void
The sign of extreme tan, which lasts a few days, risks turning into a symbol of a deeper void. Psychodynamic psychology, Piccolo explains, can help read these gestures and understand their hidden meaning: “If this is the only way you find to feel alive, what has been taken away from you – or never given – that allows you to feel alive without having to suffer?”.
A question that goes far beyond a social fashion, touching delicate strings of the growth, the relationship with the body and the psychological health of the new generations.