I am so tired of hearing "Oh my gosh, you're so pale. You need some sun!" "You're blinding me. You need a tan." or anything else related to those statements.
I am 19-years-old, and I can honestly say that being tan has never been a goal for me. Not once have I ever been in a tanning bed or laid outside just to have darker skin.
Even though I don't put myself at any excess risk to get skin cancer, my first trip to the dermatologist at age 18 did not go smoothly. I had two dark moles that the doctor was concerned about. Due to my medical history (two grandparents who had melanoma, and the other two with other types of skin cancer) we decided to go ahead and remove them.
She started out with the smaller one on my left shoulder. She used a needle to inject a numbing solution, then a few seconds later I looked away as she used a knife to cut into me. That first removal didn't hurt a bit, but the second one wouldn't be so easy.
The doctor prepared more numbing solution and moved to the next location, the bottom of my left foot. The bottom of your foot has a huge amount of nerves, so just the needle from the numbing solution caused a pretty decent amount of pain. It ended up taking two shots to numb the area enough for the excision. This mole was larger and deeper, so therefore the cut had to be larger and deeper than on my shoulder.
We all assumed that my test results would come back clear, so I went on with my life as normal. I had a slight limp for the first week my foot was healing, but nothing too serious.
About a week after my appointment, I got a text from my mom saying my test results came back, and there was a problem. She's a nurse so she told me all the medical terminology, but in simple terms both of the excised locations came back "abnormal." This meant that if I didn't get bigger pieces removed in a timely manner, it was very possible I would develop some type of skin cancer.
We made the appointment to meet with the surgeon, and we made an appointment to have my surgery at the hospital within a month of getting back my results. I had to undergo general anesthesia, and have the surgery performed in the hospital. If that's not scary enough, I wasn't sure what I would be waking up to.
When I woke up, I couldn't see my shoulder or my foot because they were both covered in bandages. I also noticed my foot was in a boot kind of like the ones people get when they break their foot. They told me I wouldn't be able to walk for two weeks, then after that I would need to wear the boot and use crutches for at least two months while my foot healed.
The first thing I did when I got home was remove the bandages to see what they had done. My shoulder was cut front to back, and it had at least twenty stitches. I thought that was bad until I saw my foot. There were three layers of stitches. One layer would dissolve on the inside of the cut, another was normal stitches tightly holding the entire wound together, but the last layer was extremely thick material that actually left scars just from where they were.
Almost a third of my foot was missing. The cut went from the pad of my foot to part of my heel. Yes, part of my heel was gone. My mom couldn't believe how deep the cut was and how much flesh they removed. When I went to get my stitches removed the nurse even said "Oh my gosh! That's huge!"
Thankfully, after that surgery everything came back clear, and I recovered. It took a long time, and I have some nasty scars, but I'm very thankful it wasn't anywhere near as serious as it could have been.
I think back on that experience every time one of my friends asks me to go lay out with them. Skin cancer is so dangerous, why risk it? Is having darker skin more important than a healthy life?
Tanning causes premature aging, dark spots, and leathery looking skin; it also increases the risk of skin cancer which can be extremely deadly. I hope that young girls will read this and think twice about skipping sunscreen or going to the tanning bed. A few years of tan skin is not worth the lifetime of consequences that will come in the future.
Stop telling girls that pale skin isn't pretty. Stop telling them they need to risk their health to meet society's standards of beauty. Healthy is pretty.
