It is really a miracle that there is even one Boomer still alive. For the most part, our generation worshipped at the altar of the sun, fearing nothing except that we might be the palest among our friends.
Boomer moms would on occasion suggest that we use some suntan lotion. Remember the little girl in the Coppertone ad with her white butt cheeks showing? Who wanted to look like the Coppertone kid? We wanted suntans. The darker the better and if you peeled a few times, it was worth it.
For Boomers, going outside in the summer without a shirt and no suntan lotion on a sweltering July day was par for the course. We figured we’d eventually get a deep tan and that would protect us from sunburn. No one worried about skin cancer – lung cancer from cigarettes, maybe – but not skin cancer.
I well remember spring break during my junior year in college. My roommate’s family lived in Indian Lake Estates in Florida and Bob and I drove all night from Chapel Hill to arrive at his house. The following morning, I put on my bathing suit and went out on a community pier on a shallow lake and fished for bass. I didn’t catch any fish, but I caught some great rays. With no shirt and no suntan lotion, I was off to a good start. That same afternoon, we drove to Vero Beach with our dates, lying in the sun all afternoon. For me, it was no shirt and no suntan lotion. I think Bob covered up a little.
That night when I got in the shower, my skin was significantly redder that a boiled lobster. And pain? The shower spray felt like nails driving into my body. It was several days before I could slip on an Izod knit shirt without agony, but talk about a tan! When I got back to Carolina, I was the envy of every student in my English Lit class – brown as a beaver.
“It is better to look great than feel great, my darling,” as George Hamilton would say, but then I peeled. Skin came off in hunks, not once but several times. My great tan morphed into a pale version of my former self. That I did not get acute melanoma and drop dead on the spot was amazing.
Today, children put on suntan lotion with a 50 SPF if they are in a room with the lights turned on. For outside in the real sun, parents coat children in polar bear fat lest one molecule of sunshine finds its way onto their fair skin. Vitamin D deficiency is now becoming something of a problem. Boomers never had that worry. Our bodies were Vitamin D factories.
Know what? Lying out in the sun and turning brown? I’d do it again. There is nothing like a great tan!