How to apply suncreams.
In Asia, we tend to tan a bit more than any other place in the equator - obviously notwithstanding the heat in Florida or California, or Australia where the ozone layer decided to take 5. Within these moments, we need to understand where we can take back our freedom to survive. We just have it in our minds, and in our hearts to care for all our social systems, as well as all that make up our bodies and systems (that we need to understand we should not give up to anyone else - from our bodies, to our minds, and then our hearts).
No one controls this - and it is all relinquished its guardianship, after years of education and safe exposure to the elements) to you upon reaching full adulthood - and not your mother, not your father or your guardians, nor your systems of governments - as you move in social expectation of how you are regarded will vary in different districts, cultural dimensions, and need to carry on, regardless.
Here is a 2017 article by Marco Lambertini : the Director-General of WWF International, if you’re interested in the facts - and state of our planet’s healthy global status.
This is how.
Wear your sunnies, and put on your suncream. Now.
There are different solutions to our sun-worship (when we seek it) or at the other end of the spectrum, our solar over-exposure problems (this is when we don’t want it, but it’s there).
So we need to understand our intent, and put on the proper amount of sunscreen to protect the skin that we’ve had for as long as we could bear to remember. In being kind to our largest system: our skin, here are a few pointers.
1/ Find an aqua-based daily solution, for temperate asian temperatures - or for asian thin skin, try the ones that are sold in asian stores. I tend to go for Neutrogena - it has an all-over thinner consistency that i like, but recently had gone to try the aqueous solutions of Innisfree - a Korean beauty care company, that’s recently been to Singapore.
2/ Correct our pre-conditioned, already-damaged skin types to approximate our ten-year-old ones - there are places that have the machines that have sun damage assessment centres - and could tell you that vitamin c is sincerely serum-friendly, and would have doses of it prescribed to take out the layer of bad things occurring in your subcutaneous.
3/ Seriously, take an all-out SPF 50: the factor 50 would clarify that we have more than a 20% dermal survival of the tannest. The research conducted with skin / dermatologists have expertly agreed that we can’t keep reversing the damages - just as we had with improper sagging probably - we can’t keep risking the sag will be nipped and tucked away as easily - or as brilliantly.
4/ There’s no such thing as healthily sunburnt. All kinds of burn will leave scars, and depending on your skin types, and zone in which you are living, there will be consequences to the dermal damages you subject your skin to. And if Icarus wasn’t a proper example, it won’t be just your wings that’ll experience the singe. It’ll be your proper social welfare as well - will you be
able to attend all your friends’ parties again knowing your face and body have been a different colour since you last saw them? I think there are different standards everywhere, but to be safe, i think it pays to salve that screeching need to suntan, and then look as deep orange as their wallpaper at the next social gathering. There’s teenager-sporty look, and there’s middle age sagging skin that deepening a shade of bronze just won’t help.
5/ Better safe than super torched. Suncreams, are a girl’s best friend now. It is either incorporated into your daily skincare regimen, in your BB cream, foundation, or your first-level moisturiser - and if that’s minimal, and you need more, feel free to spray-on a layer that sets your makeup as well as become part of your protection scheme. Correction starts with changes on the daily habit that you might be in your 20s still - and replenish moisture and collagen that what was “effortless for you before” will still be today.
And probably for the next 20 years - until they fix that ozone problem, that is. Or stop using aerosols in their retail products. Or get the governments to sign up to their carbon footprint reduction promises - or find another way to drive the eco-production that’s legit, and not just a marketing prank. Or have the illegal production of actually what are environmentally bad things not qualify to reach the open markets.
Whether we have it out with the actual climate warriors - we will never be able to switch the heft of exposure to that helio-wonder’s after-effects, it brightens no one, and neither does anything but increase the melatonin their harmful production, while ageing your skin: in various ways: sunspots, wrinkles, unwanted progression of hormonal dermal reactions to your un-tested or asian-skies-unfriendly skin care. Yes, there are indigenous products that might lighten your skin unwantedly and corrupt your very carefully curated body unexpectedly.
It’s better to be prepared now, for the future.
(Than burnt crisp, like toast.)