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Tanning Mom Patricia Krentcil Lashes Out at Critics

The New York Post calls her the "Toast of the Town." Dermatologists suggest that she suffers from "Tanorexia." And tanning-booth veteran Snooki, of "Jersey Shore" fame, slammed her for being a bad mom.

But Patricia Krentcil, the Nutley, N.J., woman accused of taking her then-5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth, leaving the little kid with burns severe enough to alarm the school nurse, says that her detractors are just jealous. And fat. And ugly.

Related: "Tanning Mom" case spotlights tanning bed dangers for minors

"I saw the headlines today, but I don't care! I don't care what anyone thinks of me!" The New York Post reported that she said outside of her hair salon yesterday. "There's somebody out there, for my whole life, that doesn't like me because they are jealous, fat, and they're ugly."

"I don't always sit in tanning booths," she insisted. "I have a life."

The 44-year-old mom of five repeatedly told reporters that she doesn't think she has a tanning problem. "Some days I tan more than others," she told the New York Post. "Do you drink coffee some days and some days you don't? It's the same thing. It's just like that."

"I like the sun. I'm from Long Island," she told reporters later at her home. "I lived at the beach."

She told reporters to look at Anna, who recently turned 6 and whose report to the school nurse about "going tanning" with her mom started the firestorm. "Look at my daughter," she said. "She's white as a ghost. She won't tan."

"If I had brought her in there, which I didn't, she'd be tanned from head to toe," she added.

Tanning bed veteran Snooki, who now prefers spray tans to tanning booths , doesn't buy it. "That b**** is crazy," she told "Extra." "You are not supposed to take kids there. Everyone know you are NOT supposed to take kids there."

In New Jersey, children under the age of 14 are not allowed to use tanning booths, and minors age 14 to 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

Krentcil's husband, Rich, says that Anna got sunburned while waiting outside the salon on a warm April day; the owner of City Tropics Salon in Nutley said that his employees told him that the little girl waited outside with her father and brother while her mother was in the tanning booth. But Krentcil told the Associated Press "We went for a walk and I tanned…. I'm in the booth, she's in the room. That's all there is to it."

Krentcil was charged with second-degree child endangerment, and is out on $2,500 cash bond. She was on probation from a 1999 arrest for credit card theft, forgery, and writing bad checks, but that has been terminated, the Associated Press reported Friday.



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