It is an ongoing debate in my head; this whole sunscreen thing. After reading yet another magazine article about the value and need for sunscreen I head right for feelings of quilt and shame.
I live in the Northeast and we have just come off of a very cold and harsh winter. Staying inside, away from all things weather, I watched my face get paler and paler. Without the help of a little blush in the morning I don’t think I would have ever convinced myself to face the world. Sadly though, by the afternoon and a long day at work, the blush would inevitably wear off and the harsh fluorescent lights of the office would wipe my face of any color or healthy hue.
It is with those recent memories that I read all the articles in the spring magazines with guilt and shame. I want a tan! I want to feel the sun on my face and to see the golden kiss of the sun on my cheeks. I don’t want to burn or to look like a lobster but, oh, how I want the lightest of brown with a rosy touch on my cheeks. I would like to look down on my thighs and not think that the bright, creamy whiteness would blind someone; I even like to spread my fingers and see the bit of contract between the brown of the hand against the lightness of the bit of web between my fingers. A subtle hint of color on my legs would help avoid a summer of pantyhose. All of these wishes I hold near and dear (and privately) to my heart.
And don’t even get me started on the copious amounts of Vitamin D I now have to take in compensation of my lack of sunlight. Even with the warmer, sunny days if I wear sunscreen I have to continue to support the vitamin industry. Research into the value of enough Vitamin D in our bodies is irrefutable and yet the only way to get enough these days, in our sunscreen obsessed nation, is by ingesting it.
It is with all those thoughts that I sit here in my living room looking out at the first sunny, 70 degree day on Cape Cod and debate whether to risk the sunscreen.
Today, I have decided to be a rebel; to live on the edge; to bask in the glories of the sun and warm weather. Tomorrow I will return to a sunscreen covered body but, today? Today I get on my tan!