Among the signs advertising beauty treatments in Singapore was one promising to lighten skins.
That struck me as strange, but perhaps people from there regard our desire to gain a tan as just as peculiar.
In spite of years of warning and repeated exhortations to slip, slop and slap, a tanned skin is stil regarded as more attractive than a pale and pasty one.
My generation spent most of its childhood outdoors. Summer Sundays at the river always finished with the application of Q-tol, that pink, sharp smelling liquid which I don’t think is available any more, which took the sting out of sun burn.
When I was a student I spent two summers as a pool attendant in Taupo, wandering round with as little on as was decent and only after my nose blistered did I start applying sun screen.
I’ve paid for it since with a couple of skin cancers. They were basal cell carcinomas, which don’t usually spread and were spotted by my GP and removed and in the wake of that I am much more careful about limiting sun exposure.
The need to do this doesn’t just apply to Pakeha, there’s been a 90% increase in the incidence of melanoma in Maori.
Macdoctor has a theory as to why.
