#SunburnArt — Collage of sunburn art examples featuring floral, Batman, and decorative designs on tanned skin.

#SunburnArt

2014hashtag / photo trenddead

Published September 29, 2026

#SunburnArt is a hashtag for photos of sunburned skin deliberately shaped into designs using sunblock, stickers or clothing as stencils. Early 2014 tweets seeded the tag, but the practice blew up in July 2015 after tabloids and dermatologists sounded alarms, turning it into one of the most-debated skin trends of that summer.

hashtag memes photo fad memes body image memes moral panic memes dangerous challenge memes

Overview

#SunburnArt tags photos of intentional sunburns where the poster used sunscreen, tape, stickers, or cut-out stencils to block UV in specific shapes, leaving pale skin as the 'ink' inside a red burn. Common designs shown in the tag include floral lace patterns across the back, geometric bands on arms, and cartoon shapes like the poop emoji on legs and butts1. Some posters skipped the stencil entirely and drew on top of the burn with marker to enhance the pattern2.

The tag runs alongside a near-identical sibling, #SunburnTattoo, which BuzzFeed used when it aggregated the trend in July 20153. The visual gimmick is the point: a temporary 'tattoo' that fades as the burn peels, usually within a week or two. Health writers covering the tag consistently framed it as a body-art fad with a UV exposure problem attached4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / Instagram (viral spread)
Date
2014

The earliest known use of the #SunburnArt hashtag is a January 27, 2014 tweet by @MeowSyz showing a woman's back with a floral sunburn pattern5. Twitter user @MauraGrierson posted another early example on April 9, 2014, with several deliberately placed tan lines under the tag6. On May 29, 2014, Instagram user bbear420 uploaded a back sunburn embellished with marker illustration, an early crossover to Instagram where the tag would later concentrate2.

There is no confirmed single creator of the format; @MeowSyz is the earliest documented poster on Twitter but is not credited as the inventor of the practice itself7.

How It Spread

#SunburnArt sat mostly dormant through 2014 and the first half of 2015, then broke into mainstream press in early July 2015. On July 1, 2015, the Daily Mail ran a story on the tag warning that dermatologists linked the practice to elevated skin cancer risk1. The next day, The Independent published a counter-piece arguing that news sites were manufacturing the trend by amplifying a small pool of images4.

Also on July 2, 2015, Skin Cancer Foundation senior vice president Deborah Sarnoff issued a public statement urging people to avoid burns of any kind, quoted by Time8. The tag kept generating stunts: on July 3, YouTuber FunnyMeNow uploaded a video of himself getting a poop-emoji sunburn on his butt7. On July 6, BuzzFeed rounded up Instagram entries under the #SunburnTattoo variant3.

After that July 2015 press cycle the tag lost momentum, and no comparable coverage or viral resurgence has been documented since.

Timeline

2014-01-27

@MeowSyz posts the earliest known #SunburnArt tweet, a floral back-burn.

2014-04-09

@MauraGrierson tweets a photo of deliberately designed tan lines under the tag.

2014-05-29

Instagram user bbear420 posts a back sunburn embellished with marker.

2015-07-01

The Daily Mail runs a story warning dermatologists oppose the trend.

2015-07-02

The Independent publishes a piece accusing news sites of inflating the trend; the Skin Cancer Foundation releases a statement via Time.

2015-07-03

YouTuber FunnyMeNow uploads a poop-emoji sunburn stunt video.

2015-07-06

BuzzFeed compiles Instagram photos under the sibling tag #SunburnTattoo.

Frequently Asked Questions