Summer Skincare - A Family Anecdote

Summer Skincare – A Family Anecdote:

The Husband grew up with a battalion of cousins – big guys, all – but when they’d visit grandma at the farm, she’d outfit each of them with a lovely large bonnet, the down-at-the-farm version of summer skincare.

No pictures of this are extant.

Skincare Thru History

But when you start thinking about skincare through the ages, it does make you wonder – pioneer women working the fields sans sunscreen – did they burn often? Never seem to in Willa Cather novels. In really old photographs, they're always kinda squinting, so we know they saw sun.

And just slightly more recently in skincare history, my own youth – never sunscreen, ever; in my generation skincare consisted of tanning it as deeply and as often as possible, and skincare products were aimed to accelerate the process. The process toward skin cancer, as we now know, but then we just thought we were modern.

We’d giggle at the women in old movies who hysterically guarded their faces from the sun, who prized lily-whiteness – maggoty whiteness, we thought. Their skincare was soap and water, and a little pale face powder, if they were really fast.

Well, as in much of human history, we’re finding the old ways were the best. Let's try skincare aimed at protecting our skin from the elements, and the bonnets will just be there to keep us from squinting.