07/01/2010

Help, my skin cells are in trauma

Posted in Uncategorized tagged beach, health, melanoma, summer, sun, sunbathing, sunscreen, suntan, tanning at 5:15 p01 by Anita Spitzer

I drove down to the beach for New Years’ Eve and on the way noticed quite a number of billboards including my favourite – a depiction of a young woman’s upper back with the caption; “Tanning is skin cells in trauma”.

Trauma? Really? We’re not getting a little carried away with ourselves? Gravel rash I will grant as ‘trauma’ but a suntan? It seems that tanning and sunburn are the latest bogeymen of the Victorian government. And yet, late in 2007, the press reported that the ‘slip, slop, slap’ campaign might have gone too far, as record numbers of people showed symptoms of vitamin D deficiency, the elderly in particular becoming more vulnerable to osteoporosis and broken bones:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/12/08/1196813081579.html

State governments, Vic Health, the Cancer Council and similar bodies undermine their own message about skin cancer to the extent that they insist it applies to everyone equally when common sense and our own experience tell us this isn’t so. Instead of giving people comprehensive and accurate information about the way in which skin type affects the likelihood of melanoma, as is done here:

http://www.melanomaawarenessfoundation.org/about/about/about-your-skin.html

we are fed patronisingly simple sound bites, including the ideologically-driven equation that tanning = trauma. For my part, the failure, or downright refusal, to acknowledge that this applies most strongly to those with fair skin and less strongly as you progress along a continuum of skin types from fair to dark, makes it difficult to take the message, or those promoting it, seriously.

Cynically, I suppose, I tend to the view that the bodies behind such campaigns are all about justifying their own existence. But it’s of greater concern that the ideology driving them has the potential to contribute to a wider victim-blaming mentality, in which skin-cancer sufferers (like lung cancer sufferers and AIDS victims before them) are blamed for their own conditions. From there, it’s just a short step to denying free health care to those who may have caused or contributed to their own ill health by a ‘lifestyle choice’, notwithstanding that genetic predisposition and other factors about which we are yet to learn are also factors in whether people fall victim to diseases, including cancers.

And all of that without considering the long term health effects of plastering our skin in sunscreen, about which very little is known.

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