August is almost upon us. As many of us get ready to jet off for our two-week flop on a sun lounger somewhere in the Med, sun tanning is back in the news.
Earlier this week, 57-year-old presenter Ulrika Jonsson responded to negative comments about how “old and over-tanned” she looked when she appeared on the Spencer Matthews Untapped podcast to discuss her sobriety.
In response to the criticism, she later wrote on Instagram: “I’m not ashamed to say that I am a sun worshipper and will no doubt pay the price for that. I work tirelessly in my garden year-round and often in the sun. I rarely sunbathe any more. Haven’t had a sunbed for six months – which I do occasionally in winter months. Not ashamed.”
Whoa! was my first reaction when I saw the photo of her deep tan and wrinkled skin, but it also brought back memories of my own tanning obsession.
Like Ulrika and many others my age, I spent my youth basting in the sun. When I was a teen in the 70s, everybody was at it: the fashion was for a deep mahogany tan.
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Cheap foreign holidays had just started to become popular, and my family was able to ditch our usual rain-sodden week in the Lake District for the beaches of Southern Italy. Suddenly, we were plunged into a world where the temperature reached 37 °C. I was hooked. My sisters and I would spend all day glued to our sun loungers.
It was so hot we would often lie in the sea, letting the waves cool us down. They say water reflects the sun’s rays onto the body, making you even browner, so that was perfect.
And it didn’t stop there. In the late 90s, when the skin cancer scares began and everybody embraced the milk-bottle look, I carried on sunbathing with gusto. The fact that I was working on a beauty magazine and received daily press releases on the dangers of the sun did nothing to curb my enthusiasm. It was around this time that the term ‘tanorexia’ was first coined.
Even in my forties, I would spend the entire month of August in Majorca with my then-fiancée – lazy days on the beaches, with nothing more than a smattering of factor 15 – I still craved the sun-kissed look. I even hit the sunbeds during the winter – so that I always looked tanned.
Only a small amount of factor 15 would be used when spending the month in MajorcaThere is nothing more fulfilling than lying in a bikini on a sun lounger, drinking in that glorious warmth. And whilst we all know there is no such thing as a healthy tan, it is still the ultimate pick-me-up and feel-good factor. The thrill of seeing bright white tan lines against your bronzed body.
That’s the thing, a tan is still associated with attractiveness. Surveys consistently reveal that most women love being tanned. One such survey by Imedeen revealed that 57 per cent of women found that having a tan made them look more ‘attractive’, ‘slimmer’ and feel more confident within themselves.
Yet, in my case, it has taken getting skin cancer in my sixties to finally throw away my bottle of tanning lotion and step into the shade.
It all started so innocently two years ago. I was getting ready for a date when I noticed a shiny red spot on my chest about the size of a pinhead. At 63, I have lots of brown and red marks from years spent sunbathing, so I put it to the back of my mind.
But then three months later, in June 2023, on a holiday in Southern Italy, I caught sight of myself in a mirror and noticed it had got bigger with a raised, crater-like edge and a crusty hollow. While I resisted the urge to Google it, it played on my thoughts and back home a few days later, I had a telephone consultation with my GP and was sent to a dermatologist.
A special photograph was taken, and two weeks later, a biopsy of the large spot was performed. “Am I going to die?” I blurted out, terrified. The test results confirmed this tiny red spot was indeed basal cell carcinoma (BCC).
While most people probably associate skin cancer with deadly malignant melanoma, which kills more than 2,000 people a year in the UK, there was an element of good news to my diagnosis.
Even when knowing about the dangers of the sun, Mulvey’s enthusiasm for a tan continuedFor one thing, it had been caught early and the biopsy had got rid of it. Secondly, basal cell carcinoma – the most common type of skin cancer in the UK – is normally very slow growing and very rarely spreads to other parts of the body. Although it can appear anywhere on sun-exposed parts such as the face, nose, forehead, cheeks and legs.
In spite of all my tanning I never imagined it would happen to me. The British Association of Dermatology says skin cancer cases in England rose from 177,677 in 2013 to 224,092 in 2019, a 26 per cent increase in just six years.
And it is not just the cancer risk, like Ulrika, the evidence of the sun’s destructive effects are all too clear when I look in the mirror and see deep furrows across my forehead and crepey wrinkles in my decolletage. Not to mention the ugly scar on my chest from my skin cancer.
“Its crucial to get basal cell carcinomas seen to early,” warns Dr Cherry Armstrong, dermatologist and Medical Director at No. 23 Skin clinic, London, “while BCC’s are the least aggressive form of skin cancer, if left too long or neglected over time, they can cause significant local invasion into skin, cartilage, bone and deeper tissues.”
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One of the problems is that we have largely focused on suspicious moles – when many skin cancers, like my red spot, don’t involve a mole at all (although Armstrong says changes in moles are associated with malignant melanoma, the most dangerous type, for which survival is poor if not caught early).
It is equally important to check for other changes in your skin, non-healing skin lesions, skin lesions which bleed with minimal trauma. Melanomas account for approximately 4-5 per cent of all skin cancers. The rest comprise basal cell carcinoma, which accounts for 75 per cent of cases, and squamous cell carcinomas (SCC), about 15 per cent.
In my case, I thought the result was going to come back negative simply because as it was smaller than other brown marks on my body. Dr Armstrong admits it can be confusing, “There are so many rashes, lumps and bumps which are harmless and can look and resemble a skin cancer.”
So what does she advise? “Pay special attention to any marks, in particular to skin areas that are exposed and burn easily such as ears, around the eyes chest and the nose.”
It has taken getting skin cancer in my sixties to teach me that hard but valuable lesson. And whilst a bit of sun can be good for us, especially as a way to get valuable vitamin D, I can safely say my ultra sunbathing days are over.
Nowadays, I have an all-over skin check once a year. This is usually only done privately and is expensive at around £150, but to me it could be a lifesaver.
I take my sunbathing tips from the Europeans and only lie out in cooler morning or evening hours. I wear sunblock every day in the warmer months.
When I go on my annual holiday to Italy this summer with my friends, not only will I be sitting under the shade, I’ll be wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat and nagging my friends to factor up.
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