In just a few weeks, you’ll be on a white sand beach with a margarita, or at the playground with your kids, or moving your workouts outside. Point is: Summer is here. And your plan is to be sun safe with SPF 50+, a big ol' hat, and a fake tan. You turn to Reddit for self-tanner recommendations, and discover something called the "Barbie Drug," or more technically, Melanotan II.
Thread after thread promises the injection provides a natural-looking sun-free bronze, without the smell and maintenance of a self-tanner or the mess and price of a good spray tan. It lasts longer than faux-tanning alternatives on the market, and you only need roughly $100 (and some patience) for the realistic-looking tan to develop.
TikTok shop retailers and Instagram stores with thousands of followers even report a suppressed appetite and boosted sexual drive. One peptide-influencing account with over 15,000 followers writes: “Now that it’s nearly summertime, I’ve added back in one of my fave peptide, Melanotan 2! It helps with so many things like fat metabolism, appetite regulation, libido, and more. I love it for sun protection and enhanced tanning.”
The before and after photos are damn convincing, so you do a quick search, and click the first semi-legitimate peptide retailer that pops up. Multiple vials of the injection arrive at your doorstep—but no instructions, so you go back to the chat boards for recommendations.
Two weeks into your injections, your skin is bronzed. You look great, but you certainly don’t feel it. Nausea has kicked in, you're vomiting in the middle of the work day, your moles are getting suspiciously darker, and there’s some new hyperpigmentation that popped up on the right side of your face. You wonder if this is all normal.
It's not.
Melanotan II is a synthetic peptide—in a similar vein to semiglutide, like Ozempic, or energy-boosting NAD+—that is designed to stimulate your body’s natural melanin production, explains Yana Deklhah, M.D., and board-certified functional medicine doctor and peptide specialist. But according to board-certified dermatologist Pooja Rambhia, M.D.: "It's not FDA-approved, and its use raises significant safety concerns."
Melanotan II is not FDA-approved, and its use raises significant safety concerns.
Nausea, facial flushing, spontaneous erections, diarrhea, headaches, and loss of appetite top the Super Fun list of reported side effects. Reddit threads and TikTok’s mention “fatigue, almost a flu-like feeling,” intense pain at the injection site, rapid heart rate, and poor circulation in the hands and feet, all of which—so the internet says—occur within “10 minutes” of taking the peptide and remain the most intense for one to two hours. Some case reports even hint that the unregulated substance has an addictive quality, fueling tanorexia.
Dermatologists aren't just concerned that Melanotan II is being used to tan—but that it's being touted as a sunscreen alternative. “No legitimate clinical trials support using unregulated Melanotan II products for sunburn prevention,” Dr. Rambhia says. In theory, it may help prevent sunburn to a very small degree (you’re tanner, so you’re less likely to burn), explains Jamie Gabel PA-C, Clinical Director for Advitam at Shafer Clinic in New York City, but it does not protect you in the way that sunscreen would. “A deep Melanotan II tan may provide you with the equivalent of SPF two to four,” he says. This is absolutely nowhere near the recommended 30+ SPF protection.
It also accelerates skin aging, DNA damage, and, most notably, an increased skin cancer risk. “Using Melanotan II won’t just make your skin tone darker—it will make your freckles darker, it will make your moles darker, and will bring out more moles,” says Rahi Sarbaziha, M.D., a board-certified integrative medicine doctor and founder of The Aesthetic Room in Beverly Hills. “There are more and more case reports that it’s dangerous if you’re predisposed to melanoma [as it can promote skin cancer progression].” Because Melanotan II works by stimulating melanocytes, doctors believe that it theoretically stimulates these cells too much and possibly divides uncontrollably and forms a melanoma tumor, explains Gabel.
Dermatologists aren't just concerned that Melanotan II is being used to tan—but that it's being touted as a sunscreen alternative.
Despite not being approved for sale and multiple warnings from the FDA, Melanotan II’s underground network, which spans from Australia to Denmark to the United States, persists. Efforts to shut down online retailers have proved largely unsuccessful. And now, social media is giving a Melanotan II microphone to users with no medical background and an agenda to peddle a dangerous narrative. Concerningly, these posts continue to go viral with thousands of views and hundreds of likes—targeting tan-hungry users with algorithm-fueled ease.
We’ve been conditioned for years and years to believe that being tan makes you glowier, hotter, and more attractive. But as methods for achieving a bronzed glow become more extreme—with unregulated injections like Melanotan II rising to the forefront—it’s even more important to rely on the science we know. Sun protection and self-tanners work, so let’s skip over the sketchy Reddit threads.
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