by Mary Rose-Sellers

Created on: July 12, 2008   Last Updated: October 30, 2008

Oh, that warm golden glow that we get from sunbathing. The warm rays of the sun make us feel so good. Just a few hours sitting under the sun and we are happy campers. How many times have we heard the expression from our mothers: "don't sit under the sun too long." And yet, we do it. We go crazy when summer comes. With the first signs of the warm rays we sit outside and fry to death.

Many years ago, while I was growing up in Greece, my mother always protected me against the sunrays. She would take me to the Aegean Sea to swim, have lunch, and sit under the warm sun for just a few minutes. She never liked it that I tanned. While she grew up in the 30's and 40's, it was not chic to have a tan. She carried that idea to my youth, and never let me sunbathe and get a tan. If I got dark she would always say that I looked like a gypsy, which wasn't the best thing to be thought of, at the time. By the early 1970's I moved to the US, and sunbathed to no end. By then, when you had a tan it was thought as rich, because you were able to travel somewhere warm in the cold winter months and get a tan. And we continually traveled in the winter months, to Florida, to Aruba, to Mexico and came back with a tan, while everyone else was as white as a sheet. It seemed that while I was young it was quite an obsession for me to be tanned. I would sit for hours and hours and sunbathe. It has only been that last year or so that I am not as obsessed about it. While we would travel in the winter months to warm climates, in the summer months we would travel to Greece, and lately we acquired a boat and spend most of the time outdoors under the scorching rays of the sun.

I started hearing about the sun damage a few years back but I thought because I am dark skinned I will never get affected. This last spring we went south to a warm place again, and even though it wasn't that hot to sit outside, I noticed that by going for walks on the beach I got burned. Since it wasn't that warm to sit under the sun I never thought I needed any sunscreen. Well, after I couple of days, my face looked puffy and I was red like a lobster. That wasn't the look that I was going for. I vowed to myself right there and then I would never go out in the sun without any type of sunscreen.

Over the years of sunbathing, I ended up having quite a few spots on my skin, my face, arms and back. The doctor has told me repeatedly to watch it. But it took me many years to realize what I am doing to my skin. Since having a dark complexion, I never thought I would burn or accumulate any dark spots. But no matter how dark complected I am I still ended up with a few dark spots.

While we are young we don't realize what damage we do to our skin by sunbathing. But as we age, we like to look young again and the dark spots on our skin ages us more. As much as tanning looks good on everyone, I realized I don't want to age prematurely. I will save whatever skin I have left, as much as I can, by not sunbathing and if I am out in the sun, I will protect my skin with sunscreen.

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