Did anyone else have parents who would toast themselves to a crisp every holiday?

[Imreallysnowedunder]

Another thread made me think of this. Both my mum and dad would go on holiday and just lie under a baking hot sun on the beach all day. Sometimes they’d briefly dip in the sea but the main portion of the day would be spent roasting.

They would both get extremely narky with me if I sought shade.

I AM that parent - and judging by how crowded the pools and beaches are on the Med, I'm hardly an endangered species!

I wear Factor 50, so don't go darker than a park gold, but it's not really about getting a tan. I adore the heat, and the feeling of hot sun on my skin relaxes me like nothing else. I love listening to the sound of the waves, and wandering in for a dip when even I get too hot. I love eating fresh fish in little beach front tavernas, washed down with chilled white or rosé wine. It's what a holiday is for me.

We're off to Majorca on Saturday and I can hardly wait. But because I'm only the sun worshipper in the family, we've booked an air conditioned villa with a private pool, so DH and the DC can come and go as they please whilst I sunbathe.

(They won't be bored, the villa has WiFi, and we're taking plenty of books and games. There'll be at least one trip to the beach all day - to swim and snorkel rather than lounge, and meals out. It's going to be bliss provided DS has gotten over the vomiting bug he seems to have picked up )

"One trip to the beach EVERY day" not all day, that should say. My family of vampires would not cope with a full day on a hot beach!

My Mum was never one to sunbathe and is very pale but I do remember her burning any time we went to the beach so that makes me think she probably didn't use suncream. My Dad has quite dark skin anyway and does even darker just by looking at the sun. I'm sure I remember him using some sort of oil! Never suncream though.

I tan fairly easily, definitely inherited more of my Dad's complexion than my Mum's- but also burn too if I'm not careful. I've stupidly burned my back today and I've only been outside for a short time to sort the pool for the kids!

It was definitely the case that factor 8 was considered a high factor. Most of the time we used 2 or 4. Factor 15 was for the more “sun aware” sensible families. I went to Australia with friends in 92 and we all bought Hawaiian tropical tanning oil with us and sun in for our hair. I burnt my feet so badly on Fraser Island I couldn’t walk for 2 days 😐

We holidayed mostly on the East coast of the UK. So not a lot of sunbathing was done. More like battling the wind and rain.

Mine don't sunbathe but walk all day for miles in the sun roasting away with no suncream, we went on an extended family holiday and Dp and sister just cooked away !

My Mum was never one to sunbathe and is very pale but I do remember her burning any time we went to the beach so that makes me think she probably didn't use suncream

a full day at the beach I’d still burn, even with factor 50, and some shade.

i have been known to burn sitting in the shade all day. If you’re out and about it’s very easy.

i went on a trip once and my companions thought I was being ridiculous. Until we went for breakfast about the 3rd day and there was only outside seating. About 9am, so not hot hot, i had
on my factor 50, and we were only sat for an hour. I burned. Only slightly, but enough for people to point it out and to have to keep out of the sun completely until the angry red went away.

Opposite here too - my parents were practically vampires! The Dr was shocked at how white & luminous my Dads legs were & thought there may be something wrong with them until we explained they were permanently encased in pajamas or trousers for the last 60 years. Neither of my parents even owned a pair of shorts let alone swim wear. We never went abroad.

I was always envious when I saw people coming back with tans from holidays abroad, it seemed so exotic! Now I've witnessed it as an adult -plenty of people in Greece a fortnight ago with burnt backs and on loungers from dawn til dusk in the glaring sun - I can see it's not a sign of style or sense!

Interesting how skin sense & anti-ageing has impacted on behaviour. When you see Hollywood stars on hols they are normally wearing hats and never have mahogany tans anymore.

Some of DH's family are real sun- worshippers addicted to deep tans & it can look a bit too David Dickinson!

Not so much my family. My mum is of Irish descent so blue white my dad is of Mediterranean and browns at the slightest hint of sun.
me im freckle and pale. My freckles come
out in the sun but other wise I go pink red pink white.

a woman at my part time job is the colour of mahogany. She goes to the hottest cheap countries and just lies by the pool. Another woman from work went with her and said she was bored as this woman would just not move all day. Get up for drinks and food and that was it. Can’t think of anything worse

Yep, Mum did every time. She spent the whole holiday sunbathing by the pool and she’d send my brother and I off to the kids clubs so she could relax. We almost never left the resort, she didn’t like the beach because sand is too messy so didn’t go there often but when we did she’d just sunbathe again. Getting sun loungers was hugely important to her, she’d wake extra early to run down to the pool to reserve one with a towel and ‘beat the Germans’!

She had skin cancer at 48.

@Llamasally When I get back from sunny holidays I’m always met with a very disappointed “you don’t have much of a tan!”

Oh I've had years of this from the inlaws peering at my legs 'Have you actually been away!?' like the sign of a good holiday is how deep your tan is. Tanning is such a weird and unhealthy competition.

I can so identify with the pp who said she used to get told off for reading in the shade on holiday. ('We haven't brought you all this way to sit inside with your nose in a book...')

I also grew up in a house where the accepted wisdom was that you needed to get your skin 'used' to the sun, and if you were pale it just required a bit more effort on your part. My parents were also early adopters of the home sun bed, which consisted of giant, unglazed UV lamps you had to lie under to get your skin ready for going on holiday. Pale skin was a sign of weakness!

I've had to work through a fair bit of deep buried anger these last few years as I've had 2 basal cell carcinomas and several suspicious moles removed. I keep having to remind myself it was just the culture of the time and no one knew better but it makes me mad to think how my natural inclination to avoid the sun was made out to be selfish and shameful.

Yes, I always hated it.

Oddly enough the attitude stood me in great stead when I studied and worked abroad.

We used to have UK holidays I stopped going at 16 they started going abroad then !

The Dr was shocked at how white & luminous my Dads legs were

😂😂😂

I saw a bloke the other day in what I thought were knee length white socks with his shorts.

It was his legs!

Gosh yes. My father in particular was awful for this. He had the complexion of a red haired person, very pale freckled skin (had strawberry blonde hair as a child before it turned mousy brown in his 20s) but used to sit and sun himself all day. Then he would get angry with me if I chose to sit in the shade or inside. He didn’t think I was doing the holiday properly if I didn’t sit in direct sunlight for 10 hours a day like he did.

I’m not sure how much attitudes have changed for some people. I was in Greece in July and there were so many people burnt red or mahogany coloured.

I’ve got handbags which look less leathery.

Or a mixture of olive oil and vinegar like a bad French dressing!
I remember basting in the Spanish sun in the 60’s like this 😱

I wear Factor 50, so don't go darker than a park gold, but it's not really about getting a tan. I adore the heat, and the feeling of hot sun on my skin relaxes me like nothing else. I love listening to the sound of the waves, and wandering in for a dip when even I get too hot. I love eating fresh fish in little beach front tavernas, washed down with chilled white or rosé wine. It's what a holiday is for me.

///

This does wonderful though

Ah yes, the days when Factor 8 (applied once in the morning) was the norm, Factor 15 was seen as being super sensible, and Factor 25 was for if you were going somewhere super hot and just being ridiculously careful! They were also the days of incredibly painful sunburn!

And my parents weren't even sun worshippers or anything, I just don't think there was much awareness.

I also remember you could buy sunbeds in the Argos catalogue, and if you wanted to age yourself super quickly, you could buy a mini one specifically for your face!

I'm guilty of this now tbh. The kids are in UV suits and covered in cream and if not in the water chose to sit in the shade. I sit in the sun. The main difference is that now I use SPF50 regularly instead of carrot cream or baby oil (FFS!), always wear a hat and wear a rashguard in the water.

We've just come back from holiday and I commented to DH that I am just as tanned, if not more so, from using SPF50 than I used to be with the baby oil as a teen and was mostly red. I have a tan but I don't look like I've been sprayed with creosote!

My parents had dark brown bottles of oil stuff to fry themselves. Possibly this:

I don't like very dark tans, your skin looks like a leather handbag. Horrible!😱

My parents were born in slums during the first world war, in the NE, when rickets was rife. They moved south as adults, after the second world war, and sought every ray of sun for them and their DC that they could, plus dosed us with cod liver oil to get even more vitamin D. They used to burn themselves to deep mahogany every summer, and we were not allowed indoors unless it was raining.

Ambre solaire absolutely stank I can remember my mum and aunts sitting In the garden smothered in this ! I mean vegetable would have had the same effect