Nina In New York: Cheers to Sun Safety!

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

Summer is here, and with it comes that mythical thing of which we only hear tall tales for roughly six months out of the year: the sun. Sure, we know it's there, because we have fleeting, hazy memories of seeing it in former lives, and science and logic tell us that just because something is not visible does not mean it has ceased to be. But during those long, dark, bleak winter months, it's easy enough to forget.

And now it's here, again! The Earth did its turning thing, like clockwork (ha ha), and we've made it around to the other side once more. It's exciting, I know. It's all we can do to keep ourselves from tearing off our clothes and laying down in worship. Actually, some of us can't even manage that. Last weekend in Central Park, I saw a shocking number of half-naked people lounging, picnicking, stretching and reveling. I'll tell you what they weren't doing: sweating. You guys, it's maybe 75° outside. Try to relax.

Anyway, the urge to soak up as many UV rays in the next few, short summer months is strong, I know. We have only but a brief moment to take all the sun has to offer us—warmth, light, Vitamin D, long days, and a deeper, browner, more slimming complexion. Who doesn't look better with a tan? No one.

Well, that's not entirely true.

I've been both blessed and cursed with skin so fair (read: white and pasty) that any hopes of tanning have long been dashed. If I am exposed to direct sunlight, I burn. Eventually, the burn goes back to white. It doesn't matter how much I moisturize, work on my "base," or employ various other strategies. It ain't gonna happen. I've made my peace with it and take solace in the thought of one day aging better than my beach bum peers and having people ask me what my secret to preternatural youth is. "Sunscreen and wine," I'll gamely say before donning an elegant, wide-brimmed hat and resuming my daily stroll through my chic yet quaint town on the French Riviera.

The moral of the story, if you dig and use your imagination, might be to always wear your sunscreen. Or drink it? Colorado-based company, Osmosis Skin Care, has come up with a drinkable SPF solution which promises to both protect you from the sun's rays for up to three hours and enhance your tan (if you so choose).

According to the Denver Business Journal:

...the product is made by manipulating radio waves that naturally occur in water to give them UV-cancelling properties, then duplicating that process hundreds of thousands of times, and bottling that water up.

Once people drink the solution, he said, it shares those solar-ray-cancelling characteristics with the water already in their body and repels sunlight at the skin level.

'They neutralize the sun before it hits you,' [Osmosis founder Dr. Ben] Johnson said. 'So we are radiating sun-protecting waves at a 97 percent level.'

If that makes sense to you, good for you. Also, you're lying.

I don't like the thrice-daily wrestlemania that ensues when I attempt to apply suntan lotion to my one-year-old any more than the next war-weary mother. I hate it. I dread it. But I don't think I'll be pouring liquid zinc into my kid's sippy cup just yet. Maybe one day when the skies are jammed with Jetson cars and scholars are finally able to make sense of the plot of Pacific Rim, downing a bottle of sunscreen water before a day at the shore will be standard. My daughter will tell her grandchildren hilarious and unbelievable stories about being slathered in smelly, thick, greasy lotion every ninety minutes and fighting so hard she wound up rubbing it into her own eyes. She'll say outdated things that show her age like, "don't forget to wear your sunscreen before going outside, children!" And they'll be all like, "Grandma Unit, nobody's worn sunscreen since, glerk, forever million years ago!"

Until then, I'm filing this under "too good to be true." Now pass me the neon zinc stick. My nose needs a reapplication.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!