A Raisin in the Sun
What happens to a Cream Deferred?
The most corrosive environmental aggressor to the skin is the Sun — it’s worse than air pollution because it’s insidious— like sugar being in the sun feels good to some extent — you just need to see all the Seasonal Affective Disorders to understand how much of our moods are affected by the weather and the extent of daylight. Like other unprotected activities this can have some hoary consequences - from the dire like skin cancer and cataracts to subtle ones like the suppression of the immune system and premature aging of the skin. Were I to have a voice in education policy, I would immediately introduce skin-education before sex-ed because daily and comprehensive suncare is just something kids need to learn when they’re young and their habits are forming — like brushing teeth.
But perhaps it’s useful to break down how the dangers of the sun play out — this is as a result of ultraviolet (UV) radiation — it’s stealthy — you can see sunlight and feel infrared radiation as heat but UV is invisible and ineffable but definitely makes its presence known to our stalwart against environmental aggression — the skin. There are 3 kinds of UV radiation
- UVA — this is the longwave UV radiation that penetrates to the dermis the skin’s thickest layer (wait for my skin layers drawing in just a few days) and causes premature skin aging and suppression of immunity (long and short term hassles). This is what causes a tan and tanning beds usually have more UVA radiation than UVB.
- UVB — this is shortwave UV radiation that burns the superficial layers of the skin and causes sunburn. The intensity varies by season and time of day and I personally feel it’s the more honest of the UVs because at least there is an indication of its impact in the skin because a burn tends to have people seek shade even though UVB rays cause more of the skin cancers.
- UVC —this is the shortest and most powerful UV radiation and is absorbed by the earth’s ozone layer — I could write a whole different post on how you should be aware of CFCs for your skin ☺
Accuweather provides a handy UV index which is worth looking at rather than assuming the cloud cover protects the skin from the sun — it is this assumption that is frequently tested when people complain of windburn — this is actually sunburn that they didn’t anticipate. I like the UV index because it reminds me to reapply sunscreen or schedule meetings later in the day.
I of course find shade-seeking a very normal activity but even I can succumb to the warmth of the sun on a cold day — it feels like chocolate sauce on ice-cream — I can’t remember when I last had an ice-cream sundae but that combination of hot and cold flavours is totally enthralling and I get it but to care for your skin you just have to make UV awareness a total priority.
Else you can find yourself like a raisin in the sun. Which is one of my favourite poems by Langston Hughes — it was his birthday yesterday — I remember chancing on a book of his in a bookstore when I was in middle-school — I had the obnoxious habit of reading entire poetry books in the store rather than buying them because you could. I would ask to be left at the bookstore when my mother went shopping and elect to wait there when I needed to be picked up and would devour whole books. No one does metaphor like Langston Hughes — it is raw, it’s real and it is universally relatable — I don’t know why as a young Indian child raised in a racially homogenous society I found him so moving but that is the power of art — I even started listening to jazz because of Langston Hughes and have a soft-spot for Harlem thanks to the Harlem Renaissance context which is different from the gentrification underway. I subsequently asked and got two of Langston Hughes poetry books for my birthday — I can see them now (languishing in storage) blue spines with cream covers and think creamy pages with sparse text that charged a reader to reflect. Especially this Raisin in the Sun metaphor — it’s a dry grape (which is not skin-friendly thanks to the superlative sugar content) and it’s in the sun — doubly dessicated — a metaphor twice as good. Though perhaps his poem Genius Child is better known
Nobody loves a genius child.
Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?
It frames the Basquiat movie but it could just as easily represent my conflicted emotions regarding the sun thanks to UV radiation.
