In the millennia preceding the industrial revolution, pallor was popular within the upper classes, hinting at a noble life of leisure spent indoors. Dark skin was associated with serfdom and toiling in fields all day. Using poisonous whiteners to create pale skin has been popular throughout history – particularly during the ancient Greek, Roman and Elizabethan eras.

The trend for whiteness halted after the industrial revolution. Its corollary urbanisation of Britain meant that by the 19th century, the working classes had moved into the shadows. They lived in cramped dwellings and worked in mines and factories. Any leisure time available was taken indoors, to avoid the smog and soot of the streets. Children developed rickets and other bone deformities and, by 1890, Theobald Palm recognised that sunlight was crucial for bone development. A year later, John Harvey Kellogg – who had still to invent the corn flake – invented the "incandescent light bath", which was used by King Edward VII, installing units in Buckingham Palace to help cure his gout.

In 1903, Niels Finsen was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine after using "phototherapy" to remove skin ulcers caused by lupus vulgaris. Tanning was only made chic 20 years later, when Coco Chanel caught too much sun on a Mediterranean cruise. The photographs of her disembarking in Cannes set a new precedent of beauty; her friend Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucigne later said: "I think she may have invented sunbathing. At that time, she invented everything."

But for Britons, this look was aspirational rather than achievable – holidays were rare, and went no further than the nearest seaside or holiday camp. The depression, the second world war and its subsequent austerity measures meant that the closest women got to tanning was dousing their legs in Bovril to create the illusion of stockings.

Actor Jessica Alba. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

By the 1960s, colour film and commercial air travel were now available and people soon had enough money to enjoy both. The glamour of sunbathing drew Britons to the Mediterranean, particularly Spain. When economic strife returned to Britain in the 1970s, methods of sunless tanning – such as Coppertone self-tan – grew in popularity, and by 1978, the sunbed was reintroduced as a quick way of bronzing. The cosmetics boom of the 1980s and the accessibility of Mediterranean package holidays too carried the glamour of tanning through to the 1990s. By 2000, a survey showed that 50% of Britons said that returning with a tan was the single most important reason for actually going on holiday.

Women with toffee-coloured skin (Jessica Alba, Beyonce, Halle Berry, Kim Kardashian) are at the forefront of definitions of 21st century beauty. An argument runs that white women try to achieve similar complexions, ignoring that these celebrities' skin tones are the result of being mixed race or non-caucasian. However, those obsessed with tanning also have Katie Price, Victoria Beckham and even the whole cast of Geordie Shore as tanning role models. The desire to tan runs deeper than race.

Fears surrounding the risks of tanning were confirmed in 2009, when it was found that rates of malignant melanoma in the UK have more than quadrupled in the past 30 years and that it is the most common form of cancer among those aged 15-34. The World Health Organisation has found that people who have been using tanning devices before age 30 are 75% more likely to develop melanoma.

The Sunbed (Regulation) Act, introduced in 2010 with much help from Girls Aloud singer and ex-tanner Nicola Roberts, made it illegal for tanning salons to allow under-18s to use sunbeds. However, there is no regulation on how often an adult can use a sunbed.

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