I took my granddaughter swimming and was given strict instructions regarding sun-screen, sun hats and sun times. I listen now. I am afraid I was not quite so diligent with my own children and I know I was not careful when I was young. Dear friends Carol, Mallory and I would make a wild concoction of baby oil and iodine and literally fry ourselves all day. The oil would bake us and the iodine would dye us. Add the lemon we slathered in our hair and I am sure our aromas preceded any arrivals. Those were the good old days!
Have you been checked for sun damage? I was. Get a look at yourself in that black light and you may never go out in the sunshine again. It was horrible. Who knew all that was underneath my skin, just waiting to emerge, one spot at a time.
I loved to tan. I love to tan. It feels good. It makes you happy. Everyone knows tan skin is better than lily white, under a rock, death warmed over skin. Even grandmother's would say, "honey, you just need a little color." Sigh. I can't even put on the fake bake anymore because all those lovely sun spots (i.e. sun damaged skin) won't take the color the same way. I look like an orange cheetah.
Are our teens listening to the dangers of ultra-violet rays? They should be, but they are not. My non-scientific poll indicates they tan winter and summer. Tanning beds are a popular and readily available solution to keeping that bronze glow all year. Unfortunately, they are also just as harmful as the "real deal." They are just as harmful and they are also available 24/7, three hundred and thirty five days a year.
Ultra-violet light in sunshine causes skin to tan by stimulating production of melanin, the skin's pigment. This light is found in sunshine and in a tanning bed. Ultraviolet light is the chief cause of three types of skin cancer: melanoma, basil cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. The Oklahoman reports that nearly 720 new cases of melanoma are expected to be reported in Oklahoma this year.
We wouldn't let our children smoke in front of us, take drugs, drink in front of us...we wouldn't let them do anything harmful to themselves. Yet if they haven't slathered on the sunscreen when they're at the lake, mowing the lawn, or participating in a sporting event, we are allowing them to do something potentially dangerous. Something potentially deadly.
We kept them protected when they were small. Remind them to protect themselves now. Keep the sun block products readily available. If the skin cancer data doesn't scare them, maybe the future skin damage and wrinkles data will.
8 comments:
Where are those reports about how melanoma cases would rise drastically by 2010 and people need to stay out of the sun? Didn't the World Health Organization give out some kind of statistics about how cases had risen in Australia tremendously in the last few years? But, there's no real big campaign to educate people about the dangers now. Thanks for your interesting article and attempt to help teens stay healthy! Even I need to remember to stay out of the sun and wear sunscreen.
Everyone knows tan skin is better than lily white, under a rock, death warmed over skin.
Maybe that's the perception being pushed onto society by tanning salons (smile).
In the immortal words of Creed (from the Office), "Au natural, baby."
Suntanned Momma: thank you for the support...I am also learning to be careful...I actually used sun-screen everywhere today (not just on my face) and realized it as a passage to another point in my life...sigh.
J
I think it is an earlier perception than even the tanning salons.....
remember the Coppertone ads when we were kids
the cocker spaniel pulling down the bathing suit of the little girl with the golden tan????
Beach Boys and surfing
In college in the forties my red-headed and fair skinned Mother went to Hawaii and spent all three weeks trying to get a tropical tan.
Her Father was still shaking his head 30 years later about how much it cost him for her to freckle and peel.
Ha - funny quote from The Office, "au natural, babay"!! I love it!
Don't you think it's a socio-economic thing. Prior to 1950 or so, women wanted a peaches and cream complexion, very pale, to prove that their husbands were wealthy and they didn't have to sully their complexion by working out of doors.
Then in the mid-20th century, after women went to work indoors post WWII, it became a sign of wealth to sport a beautiful tan year round, which meant that you weren't working on a factory aseembly line and had time to bask by the pool? Now it's just that you have the bucks to pay a tanning bed.
I have been working in the Founders' Place Community Garden this week getting it ready for the Muskogee Garden Club Tour on Sat. - Sun., and I have to admit I've picked up a little color and I like it. I feel healthier. Probably all that Vitamin D from the sunshine. Just a rationalization...
Melony
Don't you think it's a socio-economic thing.
I read a couple of articles about the "history of tanning" and you're right about the socio-economic angle, I learned something new today!
In an article that appeared in Maclean's (6/27/2005: CANCER BE DAMNED, KIDS WANNA TAN) the author stated:
"In the 19th and early 20th centuries, pale was in. European women would casually twirl frilly parasols to shield themselves from the sun, notes Stephen Katz, a sociology professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. Back then, if you showed up in public with a tan, a man could be mistaken for a field hand, and a woman for a prostitute. "Tans were labour tans," explains Katz, "and not leisure tans like they are today." In the early 1920s, "sun therapy" became popular and was prescribed for everything from fatigue to tuberculosis. Also in the '20s, fashion fixture Coco Chanel made a splash with her divine golden hide, compliments of the French Riviera. Baby oil hit the scene in the 1950s, and in '53 Coppertone unveiled its iconic ode to the tan—and one of the advertising world's most recognized trademarks—the little blond girl with pigtails and the cocker spaniel tugging at her bathing suit.
Silver metallic UV reflectors were common tan enhancers by the late 1950s, and the '60s revelled in the sand-and-surf ethos epitomized by the Beach Boys. Then, the Me Decade of the '70s gave rise to the tanning bed. A bronzed and perky Farrah Fawcett gleamed from posters on the walls of many a teenage boy. In '79, sun-meister George Hamilton became the first actor to portray Dracula with a tan, in Love At First Bite. Also that year, Bo Derek scored a perfect 10 for tanning and other attributes in 10. In the 1980s and '90s, tans took a hit, when the world looked up to realize the ozone roof over our heads was raining down radiation.
But by the late 1990s, while many continued to be mindful of the sun's harmful effects, all seemed right again in celebrity land, particularly when Bündchen hit the scene. Soon afterwards Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez appeared all nice and brown. Aniston gleamed on Friends. By 2003, spray booths offering guilt-free tans took off. "Tans are what sociologists call a signifier, or a sign, because here we have something that doesn't really mean what it means," says Katz. "Unlike good posture, and an appropriate weight, having a tan does not mean you're healthy—at all. It is the 'sign' of health, or myth of health, ruggedness, being outdoors, as well as a sexual sign."
Another article (Time Canada, 8/7/2006, WHY TEENS ARE OBSESSED WITH TANNING) I read, how this pretty sobering information:
"The incidence of melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer, has doubled in the U.S. since 1975 among women ages 15 to 29. This year 2,050 of them are expected to be diagnosed with the malignancy. "Skin cancer used to be something old people got," says Dr. James Spencer, a clinical professor of dermatology at New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Not a month goes by that I don't see somebody in their 20s now. That was unheard of 10 years ago.""
Maybe we should get Mary's neighbor friend from "Something About Mary" to be the spokesperson for the "Dangers associated with Tanning".
Oh no - 2050 malignant melinoma! That's very scary. You know, we are thinking of girls, but what about the guys and all their sporting events, shouldn't they be slathering on the sunscreen, too?
I had forgotten about those metallic silver reflectors people used to tan their faces. I think I actually comtemplated getting one, but am now glad I never did!!
Thanks so much for the research. It is very interesting stuff!!
Melony
what about the guys
You're right. Several articles I read stated that the skin cancer is as big a problem with males if not more so then with females. The articles cited that on one hand males typically don't use sunscreen, but on the other hand are typically better protected then females in terms of attire (IE. hats).
Good point about guys and hats. Never thought of that.
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