We’ve dropped the ball with sun safety

Like the nicotine scourge that’s crept so stealthily back into our lives, we now have a generation not nearly as sun-mindful as they should be.

Too many of our young adults are not heeding sun warnings like we did in the ’80s and ’90s. Which is heartbreaking. Picture: istock

To all the young sun bunnies heading out to sizzle this season, well, I wish we had the equivalent of a “Slip! Slop! Slap!” campaign to put the fear of God into you. Because like the nicotine scourge that’s crept so stealthily back into our lives, via vaping among the nation’s young, we now have a generation not nearly as sun-mindful as they should be. Australia, we’ve dropped the ball. Because incredibly, too many of our young adults are not heeding sun warnings like we did in the ’80s and ’90s. Which is heartbreaking.

Have we become lazy with our public messaging? Have we forgotten, as a nation? The horror of childhoods where we were ordered outside to “get some colour”. Honeyed up with Baby Oil. Where we freeskinned. Where radio stations would play catchy reminders every 30 minutes, “Time to turn, so you don’t burn.” Ah, all those summer cycles of Burn, Blister, Peel. On repeat. Sun Lovin’ Barbie came complete with tan lines. The sunscreen guy at Surfers Paradise wielded his spray gun. Topless tanners put Band-Aids over their nipples. And your tan would be perfected over stages, from the first sunny day after winter through to summer’s end.

But then the flipside: ominous redness. Wincing tightness. Blistered skin. Blistered lips. Not being able to sleep. Peeling layers in huge flakes that exposed the raw, piebald horror underneath (weird kids would eat the skin, just as they did Perkins Paste.) Mums swapped their home remedies. Cold showers. Hot showers. Bathtubs of ice. Thin slices of cut tomatoes across the back. Calamine mixed with tea. Cucumbers. Margarine. Aloe vera.

Then in three days’ time you’d head out and do it all over again, because you were “working up” your tan; “perfecting” it. It was a competition with other schoolkids to see how brown you could get over the summer holidays. But then the scratch of sunburn under your uniform, the itch of it, and god forbid if you let it slip to the mean kids; they’d slap you exactly where it stung.

Nicole Kidman attends the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix's The Perfect Couple in LA last month. Picture: AFP

Kids who wore T-shirts while swimming were seen as losers – but didn’t they have the last laugh. A young actress named Nicole Kidman was courageously pale, a new look on our TVs – and just look at her skin now. Australia, we had a problem, but public health bodies worked persistently hard, over decades, to fix it. “Slip! Slop! Slap!” roared into our lives in 1981, and rashies and hats followed, alongside “No hat, no play”. Dean Jones had his white bottom lip, while Warnie had his little blob of zinc on the end of his nose. Elle Macpherson’s golden hue gave way to the pale, heroin chic of Kate Moss and suddenly it was cool to look sunless.

But the competitiveness of the tan mark has crept back. The kids say that tanning bestows confidence; they don’t want to look sick. Well, you will with a melanoma in your twenties, my love. Once upon a time a tan meant desirability and healthiness, and it still does among some of our deluded young. As parents we slap on the sunblock, ruthlessly, but how to maintain the vigilance with our teens and young adults? By terrifying them. The brutal truth: a tan is a sign of skin in huge distress. It’s trying to protect itself from further UV damage.

The federal government alongside Cancer Council Australia launched a fresh campaign earlier this year, recruiting content creators and lifestyle brands to promote sun safety. Frankly, it’s not enough. Professor Georgina Long, of the Melanoma Institute, says social media influencers are having a huge impact on problematic tanning attitudes. “They’re out there in the bikini, showing their tan line … propagating the myth that everyone laps up, that tanning is beautiful.” But her message is stark: “When you see those suntan lines … that makes me feel ill, as a medical oncologist.”