All the Colors of the Rainbow
My little vacation last week is still lingering on my skin. I know some of you out there in the blogosphere probably, you know, tan or something. I can assure you that right now, I am as tan as I have ever been in my entire life.
I am normally as pale as a slice of Wonderbread. With the crusts cut off. I think it’s time for visual cues.
Here, we see my normal skin tone. This is the color that my skin is most of the time, and the color that my hidden parts are all of the time. You can blame my Polish father for supplying me with this skin tone (my Sicilian mother could have given me a nice olive complexion, but no… she had to give me the inate ability to associate food and love instead).
This here is what happens if I go out in the sun without sunscreen. The first one is after about a half hour, and the second one is after an hour or more.
You can see why I am occasionally referred to as a lobster.
Now, this summer, I have managed to spend quite a bit of time out in the sun. And I’ve also gotten a different kind of sunscreen. It’s supposed to be better, longer lasting, better for your skin, all that jazz. First of all – it doesn’t last as long as you might think. So, even though I was wearing 45, and later 55, I got burned. Mostly the first kind of burned, but I got some serious red going on my right shoulder and my eyebrows.
The shoulder I blame on the sun. The eyebrows… I only have myself to blame for not putting sunscreen there. By the way – when that burn pealed… let’s just say ew and ow and move on.
But after all the sun, and the apparently better sunscreen, I came out with color. And not the standard pink to red kind either. My skin, on my arms and face at least, is now a beautiful shade of slightly-darker-than-Wonderbread.
There you go, friends. Color!