The Jersey mom accused of toasting her 5-year-old daughter in a tanning booth melted down yesterday, ranting that she’s an excellent mother and the victim of “fat and ugly” critics who are “jealous’’ of her beautiful bronzed body.

Patricia Krentcil — surprisingly thin-skinned despite countless hours spent roasting under UV lamps — spent much of the day staggering around her hometown of Nutley, slurring to trailing reporters that she’s a great mom and nobody understands her.

“There’s somebody out there, for my whole life, that doesn’t like me because they are jealous, fat and they’re ugly,” Krentcil told a reporter in a video interview outside her hair salon.

She added, “Any mother who makes an accusation about me is not a mother, because I’m a great mother. I would never do that to my child.”

Later, at her modest, well-kept, two-story home, the 44-year-old mom of five peeked her head out a second-floor window and fumed to the media.

When asked whether she’ll continue her marathon tanning, she said, “Some days I tan more than others. Do you drink coffee some days and some days you don’t? It’s the same thing. It’s just like that.’’

She added, “I saw the headlines today, but I don’t care! I don’t care what anyone thinks of me!”

As a driver honked at the doubled-parked cars, she screamed: “Shut up! Go around!”

Then she turned her attention back to the reporters and photographers below to insist she’s no tanorexic. “I like the sun. I’m from Long Island,” she said. “I lived at the beach.”

Prosecutors charge that Krentcil took little Anna to a local tanning salon and let the fair-skinned girl get so badly burned that a school nurse dropped a dime. She’s free on $25,000 bail.

Krentcil and husband Rich, a professional trader in Jersey City, introduced two of their five kids to reporters.

“Wave. Then come back inside,” Rich said, as he led the now 6-year-old home from school.

“Look at my daughter. She’s white as a ghost. She won’t tan,” her mom said. “If I had brought her in there, which I didn’t, she’d be tanned from head to toe.”

Anna’s big sister, Ashley, 18, was also hot under the collar.

“You guys are embarrassing us,” said the pretty brunette with a healthy, sun-kissed face. “You guys need to leave and stop humiliating our family.”

Then their mom insisted, “I don’t always sit in tanning booths. I have a life.’’

She claimed people are “offering me tons of money for my experience.’’ But, she said, “I don’t want their money.’’

Parents at Anna’s school were appalled at the charges.

“What the hell goes through your brain to bring your child into a tanning booth with you?” said Dana Zipkin. “It’s bad enough you ruin yourself with tanning. Now you’re going to do it to your child?”