Sun Protection - Protect Your Neck!

As Bette Davis cleverly said, “old age is no place for sissies” and let me tell you, girlfriend was right!

Sometimes I freak out when I accidentally hit the photo button on my phone or mistakenly slide right on the Instagram app and catch a glimpse of my face when looking down. It’s not pretty seeing the sagging turkey goozle that used to be my neck so let’s do all we can to take care of our skin. I would love it if I could go back and have some real talk with my 20-something year old self.  Girl, put sunscreen on that neck!  Do some face exercises, something! 😂

The number one skin care tip I would give anyone is to wear sunscreen on your face, neck and decolletage every single day.   

I spent my teenage years trying to have that golden tan. I’d lay out on the deck at my parents’ house to get some color using Hawaiian Tropics suntan oil or baby oil and Sun-In or lemon juice in my hair to get that golden glow. When I look back at pictures of this era, I see youthful golden skin and orange hair – not the most flattering hair color for me. I even spent time baking in a tanning bed. I would put a little heart sticker on my hip so I could see how tan I was getting. Did your tanning salon hand out stickers? At the time, I felt so scandalous for having that little white heart on my hip. It is as close as I’ll ever get to having a tattoo-ha! That’s too much of a commitment for me and my taste changes. Nowadays I shudder at the thought of spending so much time baking in that tanning bed – what was I doing to my insides? It couldn’t be good – that’s all I can say.

My Mom, Dolly, always took very good care of her skin. She taught me that pale is beautiful. She encouraged me to wear hats and sunscreen when I was outside. She would tell me stories about her Aunt Betty that lost her battle with breast cancer. Aunt Betty wore a hat and long sleeves every time she was outdoors. When she died I was very young, but I do remember her youthful, alabaster skin and that she was always rocking some red lipstick. My grandmother, Flora, had virtually no wrinkles when she died in her 80s. It’s amazing to me but I think it’s from not being exposed to the sun. On the other hand, my other grandma, Lela, (are you loving these Southern names, yet? – there are more, a lot more) helped my grandpa on their farm. They were tobacco farmers in Vass, North Carolina. Her face had a beautiful roadmap of wrinkles. I knew from early on that she was a hardworking woman. Grandmother Flora was a hard worker too but not as much in the outdoorsy sense. She spent her days taking care of the children, working in the garden, preparing meals and canning and freezing vegetables. I have literally watched Flora wrench the neck of a chicken to kill it, take a cleaver and chop its head off and douse it in boiling water so it would be easier to pluck the feathers out. You would think this would have turned me into a vegetarian but what it did was make me think never to get on my grandmother’s bad side because she could take care of business if she needed to. 😉 One stern look from Flora would stop me dead in my tracks.

I use sunscreen every day. Since my breast cancer diagnosis, I take it even more seriously. That means that I use a lotion with SPF on my entire body. If I’m going to be outdoors for extended periods, I wear a hat and SPF clothing. Since I’ve had radiation, it makes my skin more susceptible to burning and so I need to wear sunscreen under my clothes for extra protection. I’m also trying to use a safer sunscreen with clean ingredients. Everything we put on our skin must be dealt with by our bodies so use caution folks!  

Here are the products I use for sun protection: