Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 99
Wear Sunscreen

If you’re as old as me, you’ll remember a track released in 1999 by Baz Luhmann about wearing sunscreen.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’99
Wear sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it
The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists”

Maybe, like me, your misspent youth involved less suncream than it should have. Perhaps it even involved coconut oil, which was what we basted ourselves with in order to  magnify the potency of the sun’s rays.  Perhaps you learned the hard way how painful sunburn can be. Perhaps you thought it was worthwhile because after the initial redness and soreness, after you’d shed a layer of perfectly good skin, you’d get the tan… total foolishness, we kinda knew it back the (Baz himself references the availability of science) but, as with the youth of every single generation, we thought we were immortal. Also we thought a tan looked cool. We even went on sunbeds because you couldn’t exactly rely on the British sunshine. Oops!

This is a classic example of how youth always feels it has to learn from experience rather than education. It has always been thus.

When my kids were small, the twice daily sunscreen application in summer was always an intense battle of wills. I fought so hard to lather my kids with this protective lotion, but they resisted with their entire beings. It didn’t matter which creams. They didn’t care how much I spent, how light and misty it was, how good it smelled; it was always considered sticky and deeply unpleasant. I’d hoped that by the time they were big enough to self-administer the cream, they’d do so in the same way they’d wear a seatbelt. Automatically. Turns out that they believe sunscreen is as optional as wearing a helmet when cycling. Which is crazy, obviously.

Instead, they started experimenting with their sun tolerance limits. This invariably involved burning to a crisp. More than once. Because, like the youth of yesteryear and those still to come, they were convinced that they knew better. It seems inconceivable because you’d think that avoiding the pain of a burn would be a no-brainer, but the appeal of being tanned apparently remains a strong incentive for taking unnecessary chances.

This would be somewhat understandable (notwithstanding the risk of cancer) if each painful encounter with sunburn increased sun tolerance in the long term. Sadly, that doesn’t work.

It might also be understandable if the protection weren’t immediate and if the lack of pain weren’t discernable within the day. But lack of pain simply isn’t data. Because you can’t easily measure what didn’t happen.  If you eat something which makes you sick, you immediately associate that food with your excessive and explosive bowel action. You never eat it again. Not doing something (for example not eating dodgy prawns) is pretty easy and it keeps you feeling normal. The problem is that, for preventative medicine to work, you have to go out of your way (sometimes unpleasantly so) just to feel exactly the same. It involves planning. It probably involves spending time and money. 

Sticky sunscreen needs to be applied before the beach because it is even worse when applied in conjunction with sand, unless you want sandy exfoliation as an added bonus. This work-around is pretty obvious, we all know that, but youth isn’t reknown for advance planning, so logic isn’t going to prevail! You get to the beach unprotected (planning lapse), and you sure as hell ain’t gonna do anything to rectify the situation now that pervasive gritty sand features prominently. Since there is no shade and you are far too hot to wear your t-shirt, and because you are fit and healthy (so what’s a little light sun exposure to you) you burn. You treat the burn like a hangover: a necessary inconvenience which will pass. But, as with alcohol, you will suffer exactly the same pain next time from making all the same mistakes! Repeated exposure doesn’t make you more resistant.

Imagine if there was a one-off vaccine that prevented sunburn and skin cancer while allowing for moderate pigmentation… now that would be quite something! Am I the only one who’d sign up? I wouldn’t even be surprised.  I can already imagine the Tiktok posts advising immense caution/outright rejection for new (albeit fully tested) vaccine.

Vaccine are kinda like sunscreen, but better as you only need to have 2, maybe 3 jabs to be fully protected forever. As with sunscreen, the aim is to carry on feeling exactly the same: pain free – but that’s a bonus only if you believe you would have been susceptible to pain in the first place. We inevitably believe,however, that we wouldn’t be susceptible because we’d be far too reasonable. We tell ourselves we’ll stay in the shade, we’ll wear long sleeves, we’re already tanned, we’ll only stay exposed for 15 minutes, we’ll only go out in late afternoon, even that we’ll wear sun cream. And of course,  all these are sensible and recommended ways of staying safe in the sun. It’s just that sometimes misfortune, or lack of planning can leave us accidentally overexposed and we can end up badly burned in the short-term and at heightened risk of skin cancer longer term. My putative vaccine would eradicate both risks.

As a beach-going mother who’s been responsible for the immediate and future health of 3 sunscreen-resistant kids it would have been game-changing. Perhaps I’m a terrible mother for even entertaining the thought of an extra (currently sci-fi) vaccine for something that a good mother should be capable of protecting her children from just by using her gentle words of reason and her ever present sunscreen. And look, I protected them. It’s just that my reasonable words were never convincing enough. Loud and persistent nagging was the norm, and active pre-beach pursuit of several kids was common.

Not fun, but what choice did I have? (And please don’t say I could always have choose  Iceland. In winter). I kinda like the warm sun. But, a gen X mother would never let her kids learn from experience however much she fantasised about it while cursing effusively because her kids haven’t learned/just don’t care that running away from their sunscreen wielding mother makes everyone hotter and the lotion application stickier! A Gen X mother would feel judged and shamed if her kids were found to be peeling due to sunscreen negligence. She wouldn’t ask her kids to stay in the shade and wear long sleeves hoping they would obey of their own volition. A Gen X mother didn’t begrudge big pharma for making a profit from scientifically proven sunscreen, she bought it and she applied it. She wouldn’t let her kids experience pain that she could easily (ish) have prevented.

Can you guess where I’m going with this?Loyal reader, of course you can!

If you’d unthinkingly protect your kid from the sun using all currently available means, why wouldn’t you protect them from unpleasant illnesses with vaccines?You might say you’ll do everything to keep them safe from infection, but do you have electron microscopes for eyes? How will you know where the virus lurks? You might argue that your child’s immune system will be strengthened by the illness, and this is true,up to a point (because some viruses, even defeated, will weaken the immune system longer term eg measles, and some are linked to cancer, eg hepatitis B and C, and HPV). But even if those long term risks didn’t exist, why would you allow your child to suffer an illness (itchy, painful, miserable, with an underlying soupçon of leathal) if you can avoid it with less hassle than sunburn. And for zero cash?

Prevention isn’t always perfect, I realise this. You can wear suncream and still burn. And you can absolutely still get sick after a would-be preventative vaccine. But still. Less sunburnt; less sick. It just sucks more to get burnt/sick when you’ve responsibly done the whole preventative rigmarole. It feels like a betrayal. Both things can be true.

In the track, Baz goes on to dispense a whole lot of good, timeless advice, for example:

“Enjoy your body, use it every way you can
Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it
It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room
Read the directions even if you don’t follow them
Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly”

He ends the track with sound advice about advice, cautioning that we should:

“be  careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it…

…But trust me on the sunscreen”

Amen to all of that!