Now, most of my readers know that I’m a little ol’ lady living in an old folks home, but don’t count me out yet…in fact listen to your elders. They have had experiences that you can’t even guess at, and have seen things that you wouldn’t believe.
Take skin, for example. Many of my friends here at the home see their doctors with regularity to check on their skin, because of all the melanoma cancers that have appeared over the years and have needed removal. My generation may be the one that began this love affair with the sun to get rid of what they imagined was a white pasty unattractive skin color, and now, in our older years, are paying the price for it.
I will admit, however, that when I discovered years & years ago that my pale Norwegian-American skin wouldn’t tan no matter how much I tried, I gave it up; I had better things to do than to lie in the boring sun. Nowadays it’s different. There are roughly 14,000 tanning salons in the United States, and that’s where urban youth go to get a fast and even tan.
What triggered this topic here on this blog was a short article in the April 2005 issue of Scientific American warning of the dangers of tanning beds. Here is some of what I learned.
It’s girls, mostly, who feel the need to emulate their peers who value tan over white skin. One in five high-school-age girls have used a tanning bed in the past year. One in ten have used it at least ten times.
Radiation from a tanning device may be more intense than the sun’s own rays. Why would someone even consider using such a dangerous machine??? From my point of view, and knowing what happens to people who get too much ultraviolet radiation, I wouldn’t go near such a place. Some places are wising up. Brazil has outlawed artificial tanning throughout the country, period. Nobody can promote or use such devices.
And other countries such as England, Spain, Germany, and France no longer permit minors to use the tanning beds.
Being the “let’s not regulate anything” country, only 10 states in the United States have banned the use of tanning beds for minors even though the evidence of how dangerous they are is clear.
Here is a diagram of the creeping melanoma. First, its a small patch on your skin. If left untreated, it silently expands deeper, then deeper still. By the time it grows large enough to enter your blood stream, you are in big trouble! Now to save your life, you must go through chemotherapy and all that nasty stuff.
Some people just never learn. Even here at the home, I see people sitting on a bench in the garden outside with their faces turned up toward the sun. Are they nuts? Their skin already looks like leather, and their wrinkles are so deep that they could hold a pencil. What once must have been a lovely face, now looks grotesque. Well, it’s their delusion, I guess.
Young people may think that old folks don’t care about their looks anymore, but nothing could be further from the truth. We dress nicely and try to stay up on the latest fashions for our generation. Someday, you will too, although my guess is that the styles that you wear now will pretty much be what you wear 50 years from now (if you don’t die of melanoma first).
So, take care of your skin. Toss out your self-perceived need to be tan. Trust me, you will be glad someday that you can’t hold a pencil in your wrinkles.
