The CBB :: View topic - Suncream in the CS

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#1: Suncream in the CS Author: Catrin, Location: Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:58 pm
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Prompted by the (relatively) very hot weather we've had here, I was wondering how the CS girls would ahve avoided sunburn. Today I went out in the sun, it was 25C, I had Factor 30 and a "large shady hat" on, and yet I got burnt to a crisp.

There are lots of mentions of large hats and parasols all through the books; I was wondering if suncream was one of the things that EBD just missed out, rather like toilets, or if it actually wasn't used at the time.

#2: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:06 pm
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I think of sunscreen as a recent phenomenon. When I was a kid, people used suntan oil -- with the objective of getting a tan faster, not blocking anything. That was about it, except for remedies sold for sunburn.

#3: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:47 pm
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Yes, the idea of keeping one's skin pale had died out by the time EBD was writing, and a tan was a good thing. People boasted about how quickly and deeply they could tan and used some alarming mixtures to help them in their quest. Brylcreem and vinegar was one, and some people sautee'd themselves in olive oil and vinegar.

#4: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:00 pm
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I remember using olive oil! It was the only time in my life that I ever got a sunburn. Definitely not recommended Embarassed

#5: Author: Kathye, Location: Staines

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:42 pm
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Wow

a bit of deep friend CCBer and chips please Shocked

#6: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:47 pm
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That's like putting butter on burns - you really would be cooking yourself. Shocked

#7: Author: Liane, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:55 pm
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Kate wrote:

That's like putting butter on burns

My Grandad did that once, it never did look right after that.

#8: Author: Róisín,

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:58 pm
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So weird - I've been wondering the same thing all week Laughing

She did approve of brown limbs though - it was a sign of health for her - remember how berrybrown Elisaveta was at the start of Camp? But then again, she liked how pale (or was that just frecklefree) Peggy was in Peggy. *muses*

#9: Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:42 pm
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It was a sign of health at that time. The TB patients would be out on the balcony come hail rain or shine to get their dose of Vitamin D. I notice that they are now concerned that some diseases are being exacerbated by lack of vitamin D.

Also, people with dark skins need more Vitamin D than fairer people - hence the incidence of rickets in the South Asian communities when they first came to Britain. the flour used for chapatis is now reinforced with extra Vit D.

It's the old story - with any substance from water to sunshine, there is potential to underdose and overdose - it's all about getting the balance right!

#10: Author: arky72, Location: Cheshire

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:49 pm
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I've only been talking about this with my mum this afternoon, when I was smothering Jonnie in factor 50 suncream for him to play in the garden, and Mum said she never put suncream on us when we were little apart from on the beach, and that she never had any suncream on until she was an adult. We decided it must be something to do with the ozone layer and that the suns rays are stronger nowadays. I am sure someone must know a more technical explanation than that!

#11: Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:52 pm
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I have to confess that inever use sunscreen, nor do I wear a hat. I tan naturally, and very rarely burn. I was out today, pushing Mum around Hathersage (village in Derbyshire) in a sleeveless top and shorts. We did sit under an umbrella when we got to the cafe, but only because it was marginally cooler.
As a kid in the 60s living by the sea in Cornwall I was in and out of the sea all day int he summer. If I put anything in it was to get tanned quicker!
Lynne (my daughter) does have to be careful though, as she is fair skinned and burns quite easily.

#12: Author: Cryst,

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:07 pm
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Kathy_S wrote:

I think of sunscreen as a recent phenomenon. When I was a kid, people used suntan oil -- with the objective of getting a tan faster, not blocking anything. That was about it, except for remedies sold for sunburn.

Not sure I agree with you on this, Kathy. My mother used to buy some revolting stuff in a tube that we had to be regularly covered with on the beach, and that was before the craze for sun tan oil.

#13: Author: Rosy-Jess, Location: Gloucestershire-London-Aberystwyth

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:30 pm
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I've always used sunscreen, normally factor 15 or above as I am olive-ish skinned, and rarely burn. I just assumed it wasn't something they thought of, or indeed had in those days - particularly as some of the books were written in the 1920a!

#14: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 11:11 pm
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Very possibly we were just backward. I can remember people oiling themselves and "laying out" for hours during the sixties,, but wasn't introduced to the concept of sunscreen until the eighties. I do have a vague memory of reading about "Glacier Cream" being used by climbers, though -- just checked and it's on a 1970 checklist.

#15: Author: Elder in Ontario, Location: Ontario, Canada

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:20 am
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Regrettably, I've always had the type of skin which burns easily, despite consistent use of protective creams even in childhood. I got the worst sunburn I've ever had as a child back in the 1950s, on a beach in Cornwall. With hindsight, that was probably partly my own fault for spending too long 'fielding' in a cricket game with my back and shoulders in the full sun without realising how long I'd been there and covering up! The experience did make me more cautious about sun exposure, though - true, I have been sunburned on occasion since then, but never so severely.

#16: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:17 am
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Two of my siblings sunburned easily and badly and the rest of us didn't, but we always thought of the sunburn as kind of a bad luck thing, - lucky us we don't sunburn, poor you, you do - but I don't recall it ever being mentioned as a health issue. If my mother ever put some kind of lotion on them, it was to try to protect them from immediate pain, not from some future health problem. I think people jus weren't aware of being in the sun as a health issue at all. Certainly, in the rural community in which I grew up, I think being concerned about being out in the sun would have been considered as strange.

#17: Author: Maisie, Location: St Albans, Herts, UK

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 7:04 am
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My family all have terribly pale skin (scottish origin). As a child we always used suncream but of factor 2,4 or in extreme circumstances 6 or 8! No wonder we still got burnt Confused

My two are plastered several times a day in factor 60 and I use it too - I could feel myself burning when out yesterday!

#18: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 11:43 am
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I never get a suntan unless it's a fake one, my skin has very little melanin, so I have to use a sunscreen to prevent burning.

#19: Author: Catrin, Location: Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 5:08 pm
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It was the immediate pain I was thinking about (and suffering!), rather than the health issues. Maybe since they spent so much time outside (all those walks and gardening sessions) that they built up a good tan/ melanin protection, unlike us poor university students.

*cringes at the thought of sunbathing in olive oil*

#20: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 5:31 pm
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Catrin wrote,

Quote:

*cringes at the thought of sunbathing in olive oil*

It's such a funny memory to me now, though - I hadn't thought of it in years until this thread brought it to mind. We were all at a camp somewhere in Cork and we thought we were so grown up and cool Cool

#21: Author: Lyanne, Location: Ipswich, England

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:25 pm
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I think because they were out so much all year, they wouldn't burn. Even in the summer they are pretty covered up & do avoid being out in the middle of the day. My husband works out doors & only ever gets burnt on his back & shoulders if he cuts the grass with no t shirt or suncream. But his face & arms don't burn at all.

#22: Author: Miriam, Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:29 pm
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Lorna Hill was aware of the dangers of getting sunburnt on an icy mountain in 1957 (in Principal Role), and (belatedly) provides her characters with cream to limit the damage. It could just be one of the things that EBD ignored.

When I lived in England I burnt easily, and our anual holiday in France always included lots of high factor sun cream (except for my father, who went deep brown by looking out the window at the sun). Since I came to live in Israel, where the sun is much stronger, I hardly ever touch sun cream, and I have only burnt once. (That was when I was about to leave the beach at 10:00am, then bumped into a friend who I hadn't seen in years - we sat there talking for the next two hours, right into the heat of the day. When I finally got dressed and left, my shoulders matched my bright red t-shirt.) Anyway, my point was that my skin has obviously adapted throiugh being in the sun from the beginning of the heat, and gradually building up protection. It is quite likeky that this also happened to the Chalet girls.

On a related subject, I was reading Oberland today, and it occured to me that the girls wear tinted glasses in the snow, but never in the sun. Were sun-glasses just not in use then, or would their shady hats have protected their eyes? The way they comment on each others appearence implies that sunglasses were not a regular feature.

#23: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:30 pm
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Lyanne wrote:

I think because they were out so much all year, they wouldn't burn. Even in the summer they are pretty covered up & do avoid being out in the middle of the day. My husband works out doors & only ever gets burnt on his back & shoulders if he cuts the grass with no t shirt or suncream. But his face & arms don't burn at all.

As well as that, they'd be relatively well covered up. Their arms would be covered til midway to their elbows while their skirts would probably be below the knee and the elder girls would be wearing stockings. So very little exposed skin to get burned. The only time really would be when they're swimming - and their swimming costumes would still offer more coverage than ours... see here! No bikinis for the Chalet girls!

#24: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:24 pm
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I have two friends being treated for skin cancer at the moment. The elder has had all the cancer removed, but will be monitored for the next five years; the younger has a far more invasive form of it, and with two young children to bring up, she's in a terrible state.

Please, everyone, be careful in the sun.

#25: Author: Alex, Location: Cambs, UK

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:49 pm
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When I was in Cape Town, a girl in my dorm at the hostel got very badly burned climbing Table Mountain, the worst I have ever seen - THROUGH HER T-SHIRT. Her whole body was very red indeed. I still don't really understand how this happened (it might even have been worse under her t-shirt that it was on the exposed parts.

#26: Author: Lolly, Location: London

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:58 pm
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Miriam wrote:

Lorna Hill was aware of the dangers of getting sunburnt on an icy mountain in 1957 (in Principal Role), and (belatedly) provides her characters with cream to limit the damage. It could just be one of the things that EBD ignored.

On a related subject, I was reading Oberland today, and it occured to me that the girls wear tinted glasses in the snow, but never in the sun. Were sun-glasses just not in use then, or would their shady hats have protected their eyes? The way they comment on each others appearence implies that sunglasses were not a regular feature.

The reflection of the sun on the snow is much much brighter than normal sunshine. Which also means that the girls would surely have burned when skiing (or skimming Laughing

!) on a sunny day when they would all have been sans their shady hats.

#27: Author: Charity,

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:49 pm
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Róisín wrote:

So weird - I've been wondering the same thing all week Laughing

Was reading Camp today and noticed that the girls are worried what the King will think of Elisaveta being so brown. Grizel is also teased for having developed freckles in one day and apparently she normally tries hard to avoid the sun and is embarrassed. There are also discussions among the Guiders as to whether parasols are "Guide-like" and the consensus is that it's much hotter than in England and they are therefore acceptable.

#28: Author: Joan the Dwarf, Location: Er, where am I?

Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 8:33 am
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Alex wrote:

When I was in Cape Town, a girl in my dorm at the hostel got very badly burned climbing Table Mountain, the worst I have ever seen - THROUGH HER T-SHIRT. Her whole body was very red indeed. I still don't really understand how this happened (it might even have been worse under her t-shirt that it was on the exposed parts.

This is something that a lot of people don't realise: a thin or loose-woven shirt isn't going to protect you! This is why walking shops stock clothing with SPF ratings on them.

ETA: it's always better to wear something rather than nothing, though: the increased burning under her shirt will've been because those parts weren't used to the sun.

My brother had skin cancer when he was 19 and I've been ultra-cautious ever since then.

#29: Author: Kirsty, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:16 am
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Joan the Dwarf wrote:

Alex wrote:

I've seen this happen as well. At a softball tounament in February (probably the hottest month of the year in Melbourne/Victoria) we had the games in the middle of a horse racing-track, so there was no natural shade whatsoever. We made sure all the kids put sunscreen on their faces & arms at regular intervals, and were absoluteley horrified to find that night about a half-dozen of them were burnt through their tops. With one of them, you could quite clearly see the number on her back, as this was a heavier plasticky material which diodn't let the rays through

#30: Author: Daphne, Location: Herts

Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:05 pm
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I believe a normal T-shirt is the equivalent of SPF 15. So at lunchtime somewhere hot and on a sunny day with a burn time of 15 mins, you can spend just under 4 hours in the sun in your T-shirt before you can expect to start to burn under it.

#31: Author: Lisa A., Location: North Yorkshire

Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:04 am
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It is quite frightening to hear that most of the sun damage to your skin is done in childhood. When I was at school in the seventies/eighties, getting tanned was a competitive sport - watch-strap mark to show how white you were to start off with was essential. We used to deliberately burn as much as we could. My mum, who was (and is!) health-conscious to the point of crankiness, also did this, so I guess there must have been absolutely no health concerns about this at all.

#32: Author: Rosy-Jess, Location: Gloucestershire-London-Aberystwyth

Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:48 am
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I always try to wear at least factor 20, and in this heat factor 40. And I am still tanning. I guess it must just be that i have fairly olive skin - I burn maybe once a summer, if that, but I am quite proud that thus far this year I have not burnt, and intend to keep it that way!

#33: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 4:57 pm
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It's certainly something that has changed since my childhood, when I don't think sun-cream was used in this country at all. And my grandmother thought that sunglasses were totally unnecessary in our climate, although she would have worn them in Egypt and India.

It's one of those things that has changed as knowledge has developed over the past 50 years. Certainly at school we would anoint ourselves in Nivea (at a boarding-school, we didn't have access to olive oil!) in the hope of tanning faster. And even in the early 1980s, when my daughter was small, most parents still let their kids run around in nothing but bathing trunks - I did insist on her wearing a T-shirt. As far as I know she only got burnt once...... which I still feel seriously guilty about.

Quite a change now when it's a matter of everybody slapping suncream on themselves before even getting out of the car, or going shopping! AND I nearly always wear a hat, which I very seldom did as a kid. My mother always did, though - she gets a rash from the sun.

#34: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 5:13 pm
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Quote:

Quite a change now when it's a matter of everybody slapping suncream on themselves before even getting out of the car, or going shopping!

I was at the seaside on Sunday and saw very pale skinned girls walking around wearing just skimpy bikinis. Short of bathing in it there's no way you can cover that much skin effectively with sunscreen. At the end of the afternoon I saw one girl with burns on her hipbones above her bikini and on her thighs which made me wince. They were going to be extremely painful if she put trousers on.

Jay B.

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