Although Beauty May Be Skin-Deep, a Suntan Is Not

Summer was long gone when I first noticed the raised spot on my nose. It looked like an abrasion. Perhaps I had bumped into something and broken the skin. No big deal, I thought.

But it didn’t go away. Months passed, while I waited for it to heal. I rubbed aloe vera into my skin. Steeled myself not to fidget with the raised blotch. All to no avail.

Peering in the mirror brought no revelations. I have pale skin with lots of freckles, so this thing on my nose wasn’t really noticeable. But it was rough and unpleasant to the touch. I started to finger it unconsciously, the way my Dad would press a bump where his nose had been broken years earlier in a fall.

A year went by. Meanwhile, my mother developed some disturbing, scaly blotches on her arms, cheeks and back. The skin was angry, reddened. Precancerous cells, the doctor told her. We’ll need to do some laser work on that, he advised.

I think it was the sight of my own mother that finally alarmed me. Our pale, Northern European skin was never meant for a hot desert clime. Or dwindling ozone. Or the prevailing fashion trend of my youth, when being tan was so cool.

*

Throughout my teens I had lain for hours, soaking up the rays. Eventually I tanned, but first I burned, a painful red color. At a mountain lake one summer, the sun really fried me through the thin atmosphere. My eyelids swelled. Within days, my skin blistered and peeled.

But two days later, I was back on the sand, applying more baby oil to my new, wrinkled pink skin, determined to whip that flesh of mine into the desired copper tone. No pain, no gain.

My mother sat alongside me in her beach chair, but by this time she was slathering on white gloppy lotion and urged me to do the same.

“Denise, you’re burning,” she would admonish.

“Yes,” I would think. “Yes, yes yes.”

At Loyola Marymount University, I scheduled all my classes in the morning and evening so I could drive to Playa del Rey and bake during the heat of the day. I remember taking my thick business law book to study, constantly moving it so I wouldn’t block the sun. Oh, how my arms got heavy holding up that tome. But every ray counted.

Afterward, it felt great to take a shower, rinse off the grit and oil, then slip into a sun dress for my evening class. “Wow, you’re so dark,” my friends murmured.

Things changed in my 20s. I got too busy with real life to worry about staying tanned. There was a big push to educate people about the dangers of too much sun. Even the advertising slogans went from “tan, don’t burn” to “offers maximum protection.”

At some point in the ‘80s, pale actually became in. I was back in style.

Around the same time, I began tuning in to the dangers of too much sun. It caused wrinkles. Damaged skin. Eroded its elasticity. Could lead to skin cancer. Burns were really dangerous.

Worst of all, according to Dr. Perry Robins, president of the Skin Cancer Foundation in New York, most of the damage happened before age 20. In his 1994 book “Safe in the Sun for Children” (Skin Cancer Foundation), Robins recommends that parents keep their children out of the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., put on sunscreen with a sun protection factor of at least 15 before letting them out, dress them in hats or long sleeves and make sure there is a sheltered shady area for play.

Doctors were discovering that far from a sign of glowing health, tans were the body’s response to sun damage. Once alerted that skin had been damaged, the body races to produce melanin, which darkens the skin to protect against further damage.

Perhaps I ignored my weird abrasion for so long because the more I learned about sun damage, the more scared I got. But after my mother’s diagnosis, fear propelled me to pick up the phone.

*

In his Burbank office, dermatologist Jeff Ashley extended his fingers and ran them gently over the raised spot on my nose.

“It’s a lesion,” he told me gravely. “Those are precancerous cells. It’s called actinic keratosis.” The cells in this particular lesion, he explained, are not dividing and multiplying with normal regulation.

What if I hadn’t come in?

Dr. Ashley eyed me solemnly.

Right now it’s confined to the epidermis, he continued. But the cells could become more aggressive and move deeper into the part of the skin called the dermis. And then it could spread.

“If you want to bet there’s only a 20% chance it’s going to develop into a cancer, you can let it sit there,” he told me.

The treatment was fast. The doctor dipped a cotton swab into liquid nitrogen and pressed it hard against my nose. I heard all those precancerous cells sizzling as they burned off. It stung more than hurt.

And with that, I was finished. I paid my $90 and left. I returned six weeks later and was pronounced cured.

Now, a day rarely goes by that I don’t scrutinize blotches, freckles, weird spots where there were none yesterday. I realize the damage was done years ago. I also realize I was lucky. I didn’t have malignant melanoma, the skin cancer that if untreated can lead to death in six months.

For now, I’m OK. And my mom? Those pink blotches were removed, but they are creeping back in different places. One day, mine may too. Like “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” signs will appear on my skin, evidence of the abuse that took place years ago.

In the meantime, I no longer take chances. I wear sun block outdoors, even on overcast days in September or February. I heed the word of dermatologists who say people should wear sun block for any outdoor activity longer than 15 minutes.

And I shudder when I see people at the beach, greased up with oil, wearing those reflecting silver collars around their faces to refract the rays.

Don’t they know?