Screening the Sun

The interesting thing about sunscreen is that its not exactly a "screen" for the sun, you know? I mean: lots of it still gets through the screen so it ain't much of a screen. If I sold a bug screen that worked this bad I'd be out of business in 2 days.

The fun part starts when sunscreen fails and everybody near enough to see the rosy glow beaming off your scalded hide immediately wants to help:

Oh well - you should have reapplied.
Did you get in the water? I bet you got in the water.
You know if you get in the water you have to reapply.
What number did you use? 6?
6 isn't enough to keep you from getting burned. You should know that. You're 27 years old.
And then to make it worse you got in the water, didn't you?
I can tell you did. Your hair is all wet. You got in the water.
You know its not really 'waterproof'. Its your fault.
You know you shouldn't do that - get burned like that. It'll give you cancer.

Everybody is so quick to defend sunscreen, but c'mon. If you're wearing sunscreen there's a 90% chance you're on the water somewhere. Waterproof should mean "GO ON JUMP IN! YOU'LL BE FINE!", but it doesn't. It means "OH MAN GET OUT OF THE WATER AND SPREAD SOME MORE OF THIS WHITE BUTTER ALL OVER YOU QUICK BEFORE YOU ROAST LIKE A HAIRY PORK LOIN."

And what do the numbers mean? EXACTLY? Eh? If it says "6" that, to me, means you can stay out 6 times as long with this marinade spread all over you than you could otherwise.... Apparently that is not the case.

Which brings me to my point: the back of the sunscreen bottle should do away with all the warnings and ingredients and stuff. Shove those SPF numbers off on somebody who cares. All I want to see is a close-up of a man's back after he's spent 6hrs sitting in the sun with that particular sunscreen on it.

Then I'll know what I'm dealing with.