For some years now I have been slathering myself with sunscreen during all daylight hours, 365 days a year. Mind you, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where the cloud cover nine months of the year is a wool blanket. There is exactly no chance that a ray of tanning or burning sunlight can penetrate it. Ergo, I cannot make the argument that I'm protecting myself from skin cancer. I'm afraid it's all in the service of Vanity.
Skin-care experts (most of them sellers of sunscreen, I suppose) tell us that only three evils are responsible for wrinkled skin: cigarettes (not an issue for me); the passage of time (don't know of any OTC products that address that); and light. Every time a UV ray, however feeble, reaches our skin, it wrinkles it just that tiny bit more. So I've made a practice of embalming myself in sunscreen. Vanity.
(I've reasoned that I have lost time to make up for. I was an adolescent in an era when we basted ourselves in mineral oil and went to "lie out" in the back yard. The boredom nearly killed me, but I did it in the service of Vanity.)
Sunscreen poses ethical issues for me beyond those of my own character. The stuff is contributing to the demise of the coral reefs. Even if you live in Kansas, it rinses off, and that water eventually reaches the sea, right? Avobenzone and other unpronounceables in commercial sunscreens are toxic to the already fragile and threatened corals. I've tried all the groovy non-toxic susncreens on the market, but they go on like cake frosting and make you look like you're ready for Kabuki theater.
So now that we're doing the no-plastics year, I really, really can't justify the Coppertone. I'm setting aside what I've got on hand until the summer months (when they will fall under the Parameter of medical necessity) and bravely going bareskinned.
And if you see a woman driving in the rain this winter in a wide-brimmed hat, dark glasses and kid gloves, you'll know who she is.
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