Barstool Sports

Yahoo – Shawnee (N.J.) High senior basketball star Josh Borrelli is often the “MVP” of his team’s victories. He scores 20 or more points practically every time he steps on to the floor and has the kind of smooth shot from distance that can easily translate to the next level. In short, he has all the ingredients to be the Shawnee basketball team’s big man on campus. Yet, as it turns out, Borrelli has yet to even celebrate one of his team’s victories with his teammates, for a rather compelling reason: He has to get to a tanning bed fast … on doctor’s orders.

As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Borrelli suffers from a phenomenally rare skin disease called Mucha-Habermann, which is an auto-immune condition which causes his skin to break out in rashes and lesions. Mucha-Habermann is one of the nation’s most rare diseases – the Inquirer reported that when he was diagnosed, Borrelli was the only person in America who had the condition — and so little is known about it that at the moment it has no known cause or cure. Rather, all Borrelli can do is take medicine and spend eight minutes per day in an ultraviolet tanning booth. To ensure that the ultraviolet technique is effective, Borrelli can’t miss a single day.

Just to be safe, the high schooler forced his father to accompany him on his first few trips to get tanned, just so the elder Borrelli could dispel any concerns that his son was a teenage boy struggling with tanorexia. “I was kind of embarrassed that they would think I was a guy who wanted to get tan,” Josh Borrelli told the Inquirer.

You’re telling me this kid has to average 20+ points a game AND maintain a permanent tan?   Poor baby!   Let’s all cry for the super bronze stud athlete.   Life must be so rough for the tan jock.   Listen everybody knows being tan is the most important part of being hot.  Pale people are disgusting.  Second most important part is being a good athlete.  Seems to me Josh Borrelli is doing just fine.   Not to mention having literally a doctor’s note to be a dude and go to the tanning salon is pretty much the best thing ever.  I mean no self respecting male can go fake tanning and just sit there in the lounge reading a magazine waiting for a booth.  Add a note medically requiring it and an escort from your dad to explain your situation and boom you’re set.  Just plop yourself in the booth, stick the little cones in your eyes, and mellow out to the soothing radio streamed beach sounds as you brown completely judgement free.  I’ll take a little Mucha-Habermann in a heartbeat.