All my youth I spent craving for beautiful golden tan and envying everyone around the genes which made it possible for them. Now I feel liberated and I believe pale is beautiful. So when summer approaches, naturally, my interest in the sunscreen topic increases. Every blogger raves about the SPF in their foundations and BB Creams and how it's gonna protect them from the harmful rays, manufacturers outdo themselves producing anything they can think of with some amount of sunscreen, Neutrogena has even managed to make a sunblock with SPF100!
I've always felt that the instructions on how to use sun-protective substances weren't precise enough. Dermatologists claim that you need to apply a fairly thick layer of sunblock for it to work. I've just learned that you need an almond-sized drop of eg. sun protective product on your face. Can you imagine using that much of your BB Cream or foundation and then going out in the blazing sun? Similarly, many powders contain high SPF but if I dust them lightly over my face, are they really gonna work?
What is more doctors say that the highest SPF that works is SPF50, so products like Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock SPFG100 are pure gimmicks intended to attract naive customers. But where is the moral responsibility of the manufacturer? If a customer is led to believe that they can spend 100 minutes in the sun instead of 50 without suffering any consequences they will surely do.
What puzzles me even more is a relatively small number of eye care products containing SPF. You really need to do your research to get some, and it's not automatically understood that an eye cream or concealer should contain any sun protection, which is weird cause this is one of the most wrinkle-prone areas onthe face.
At last the US government took the matter into their own hands and introduced new regulations connected with the labelling of sunscreen products (eg. Neutrogena will no longer be able to sell its SPF100) and specifies the ways of using sunscreen safely. You can read the leaflet here here.
I hope the medical authorities of the EU will follow suit. In countries like Poland, where scorch-tanned means beautiful and healthy, it's extremely hard to find out about sun protection cause simply nobody's interested (apart from a couple of beauty bloggers, and beauty websites, which tend to follow western trends and weirdos like me whose children remain albino pale all summer due to sun protection and are believed by everyone around to be sick).
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