San Jose, Calif. ? Ali Walters is almost apologetic when she talks about the color of her skin.

After spending months working on her even tan, the 16-year-old student at San Jose’s Pioneer High School is now as gold as honey, a hue she sets off with white-white shorts and brightly colored tank tops. But, she laments, she isn’t nearly as dark as many of her peers.

Even after endless warnings from doctors and teen magazines about the cancer risks of sun tanning, for an increasing number of teens, the Coppertone look remains a veritable must-have. It is part fashion statement, part beauty mandate, and many teens have become obsessed with trying to obtain it.

“A lot of girls I know are tan — or want to be tan,” said Ali, who pops into a tanning booth at least once or twice a week.

Surveys have found that the phenomena extends nationwide, with the majority of teens believing they look better, healthier, more sophisticated, older and thinner with a tan. More than half say it makes them appear more athletic, too.

In fact, a string of new reports released this spring and summer help support what many doctors say they’ve known for years: Teen attitudes about tanning are getting substantially unhealthier at a time when skin cancer rates are rising dramatically.

“Right now, we’re at the apex of the bronze goddess era,” said Atoosa Rubenstein, editor-in-chief of CosmoGIRL magazine.

According to a survey by the American Academy of Dermatology this spring, 46.5 percent of people younger than 25 said they were planning to tan more than they did last year. Half of the respondents said they believed they look good after they’ve been out in the sun.

“A tan improves their self-image, which is where the problem is,” said Dr. Mark Naylor, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Naylor said doctors are now seeing melanoma of the buttocks, which they never used to see, something he attributes to tanning booth use.

In another recent survey of more than 10,000 teens nationwide, 89 percent of girls and 78 percent of boys said some or most of their friends actively attempt to get tan.

The study, one of two on sun behavior published in the journal Pediatrics in June, found that youths aren’t just hitting the beach or sunning themselves in their back yards. About 14 percent of the girls polled had gone to a tanning salon in the past year, and the older they got, the more likely they were to have done so. More than a third of the 17-year-olds said they had used a tanning booth in the past 12 months, compared with 7 percent of 14-year-old girls.

Missy Miner soaks up rays in a tanning booth in Altamonte Springs, Fla., trying to get ready for the beach. Younger women like Missy run about the same risk of premature aging and skin cancer as they would get from lying on the beach, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

Dermatologists tell horror stories about the lengths some teens have gone to achieve a savage tan, sometimes forgoing sunscreen in favor of Pam cooking oil or Crisco.

New extreme

Parents and past generations of teens haven’t always had exemplary skin care practices themselves, but many teens nowadays have taken tanning to a new level, experts insist. Even Latinas and some Asian-American teens who already have olive skin tones are feeling the need to be even darker, although doctors and researchers said the trend has been most visible among white girls.

But, across the board, teens seem to care more about their skin tone today than wrinkles or melanoma tomorrow.

“They’re tanning junkies,” said Dr. James Spencer, vice chairman of the department of dermatology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Certainly, in every generation since fashion designer Coco Chanel made tanning popular in the 1920s, there have been teen sun worshippers.

“Fourteen- or 15-year-olds, they try to be like Britney Spears” — who reportedly has a tanning booth in her tour bus — said Jeff Dunnam, 18, a recent graduate of Bellarmine High School. Dunnam, a moderately tanned swim instructor who makes an effort to slather on the sunscreen, believes girls are under much more pressure to be tan today than are teen boys.

It’s a fact that has not gone unnoticed by teen magazine editors, who regularly run articles on proper sun protection and “sunless tanners,” colored lotions consumers can use to make their skin appear darker than it really is.

But many girls haven’t heeded those messages.

“Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera: All of the pop icons are all about being tan,” CosmoGIRL’s Rubenstein said. But often they employ makeup techniques, sunless tanners and special lighting to darken their skin for photo shoots and red carpet appearances, tricks that are not common knowledge among many of their fans.

When Aguilera had her picture taken for her first CosmoGIRL cover, in March 2000, for instance, “the first thing she said to us was, ‘Make my skin four shades darker,'” Rubenstein said.

Many girls are left with the impression that they have to hit the beach or a tanning salon to get the look that has helped the pop princesses land handsome boyfriends and record contracts. It’s one of the few ways girls can mirror their idols.

“Maybe you can’t have the body. Maybe you can’t have the expensive clothes. You can’t have Justin Timberlake,” Rubenstein said. “But you can easily have the tan.”

Dermatologists warn, however, that they can just as easily have skin cancer, too.