Read Full Article HereAll Lindsey Hall wanted to be when she was younger was tan. At 15, she was lying in a tanning bed for 20 minutes a day. “It was really the heyday of tanning beds,” Hall, now 36, tells Yahoo. “It was like the thing to do.”
She never wore sunscreen, despite her mom’s begging her to. When a friend in their group “would always be harping on about sunscreen usage,” Hall and her other pals would get annoyed. Now she says her behavior and her resistance to sun protection “is awful to think about.”
Sunburns are something Amanda Golka knows well. Growing up, the 27-year-old would dodge her parents as they chased her around with sun protection as a kid. Sunscreen was thick, sticky and a nuisance to put on — but she needed it. “I am very pale and burn so easily,” she tells Yahoo. As a child, however, she didn’t really care about the red hue that her complexion would take on after a day on her uncle’s boat.
These days, Golka still burns easily, but she’s much more serious about protecting her skin. Case in point: After experiencing an “atrocious sunburn” while attending the Long Beach Grand Prix in April, she wrote a piece on her Substack urging brands to provide sunscreen at sporting events. In her essay, Golka shared how her more recent burns made her feel like a “bad adult.”
By and large, however, experts tell Yahoo that conversations around sun care have evolved for the better, thanks in part, they say, to an anti-aging culture that doesn’t want to deal with the consequences (wrinkles, sun spots) of tanning.
Dr. Kathryn Celeste Durham, a dermatologist with U.S. Dermatology Partners Fort Worth, in Texas, says the focus on anti-aging is what’s made the biggest difference in sun health today. “Looking younger is better, not looking tan,” she tells Yahoo. “In the past, it was tan. But now we see that people want to be young and stay looking young, and I tell people all the time that sunscreen is your first line of defense.”
It also helps that “the experience of using sunscreen has changed drastically,” she adds. “People think of physical sunblocks as zinc on your nose. … Now we have these beautiful, cosmetically elegant sunscreens that we can use every day as part of our daily routine to help protect us from the sun.”
