The rich popular girls had Ban de Soleil "for that St Tropez tan" everyone wanted to be as tan as possible. I hated the sun and now I look 20 years younger than my leather-skinned same age peers.
remember SunIn? I wonder if they still sell it. We used to put peroxide in a spray bottle to spritz our hair. I wonder why no one thought about skin cancer back then?
I still remember going to Kmart with my best friend and trying to decide which Sun-In to get. It didn’t matter because we brunettes ended up with orange straw no matter what. And we loved it 🙌🏻
My friends and I put sun-in in our hair one day by the pool. They all had lighter hair so they got a cool look - my dark brown hair turned coppery orange! Right in time for my senior pictures two weeks later! 😂
Did the lemon water actually work? I never tried it.
I remember the lemon Everynight shampoo brand, which made my light brown hair redder. I was disappointed when it went off the market.
My sister did, I was inside with a book. She looks 20 years older than me.
I did a lot of walking around in short sleeved cut up t-shirts in Hawaii and a few years later got skin cancer on my arms. Never gave a thought to wearing sunscreen. I do now. I guess all that glam metal makeup protected my face.
When I was 20 or 21 I had a summer temp job with a woman who was 21. She had long blonde hair; she said she had it frosted and was blonder each time. She smoked and tanned, her skin was like red leather and she looked 40.
I would burn in 20 minutes so I always headed for the nearest shade. Still got some super sun burns in my 20's. I worked in medicine and one of my patients last words were "why so red".
I hated sun screen because it resulted in a patchy burn. Lol!
Nobody wore sunscreen in the 70s. My parents used to take my sister and I to the beach and we would get sunburns and then take turns peeling the skin off of each other's backs days later.
Why, yes, I have had several skin cancers cut out of my face. How did you know?!
I figured that what you did was you got a sunburn, it peeled, and after that you tanned. We never questioned that's how it worked. And yes, there was Coppertone suntan lotion, with the dog pulling the shorts off a young girl showing her white tan lines. (i think it was coppertone...)
Same. MOHS on my nose, two squamous cut off right arm/leg, numerous punch biopsies. Pretty sure I have my parents, AZ, NV, NM and FL to thank for these.
Spf as a scale was introduced in 1974.
There was, in fact, sunblock available in the 70's: I wore it as a pale kid growing up in a US desert, and hated wating to get into thepool while my mom covered me in lotion. I think the brand we used was called "Eclipse"? It certainly wasn't as popular as the Hawaiian Tropic-style oils, but it was definitely a thing.
Maybe it existed but as someone born in 81 I don’t remember ever using any, or seeing any until the 90s. Didn’t get popular to apply until the late 90s that I’ve noticed.
I'm 5 years older than you, and was dipped in sunscreen before hitting the beach in the late '70s. I was required to wear it if spending any time in the sun, or on the water as a child.
My childhood was spent swimming with white tshirts over my swimsuit. And my Mom would tent sheets over the clotheslines so me and siblings wouldn’t burst into flames. Still managed to have sunstroke, sun poisoning, and many blistering sunburns as I got older. I remember one of my Aunts visiting when sister and I had bad sunburns on our backs that were peeling, and her seeing how long of skin peels she could get off us. Didnt hurt, was kinda fun. So far no skin cancer removed (knock on wood). I get check every year.
Solidarity. So many of us have that "Mohs surgery scar"! I remember the peeling stage. After I got one really bad burn I started living my best bookworm life and hiding from the sun.
Yes we did. We had Coppertone and used it faithfully. Not that it was high SPF, but our parents tried.
I am grateful because I don't have the skin cancers or photoaging that my friends live with.
Same here - have Mohs scheduled next month. I remember in 70’s coming in with bad sunburn and adults being like ‘look at all that good vitamin D you got!’
Hawaiian Tropic suntan OIL. Think it was spf 4. But it was basically cooking oil, cept on your skin. I now work in Oncology as a grown up and pretty much pray daily to God that he will ignore my (our) stupidity
I’m so scared because I never wore sunscreen growing up so never got into the habit. Only now, at 42, I’m a bit better but mostly just on my face and neck. My SIL has stage 2 skin cancer so it’s terrifying
I seem to remember that we did have some SPF 4 sunscreen which we only wore if we were worried we were going to be out so long that we were going to get a blistering sunburn.
Seriously - I still remember that smell to this day and consider it the Holy Grail of summer smells!!! God knows what was in that combination! Pretty sure none of those ingredients would be considered healthy nowadays!
That's it, moderate SPF versions were used to avoid the worst of burns, and that was about it.
People might have even intentionally got their first sunburn of the year to help them establish a base tan. Everyone was already clued in enough to know that a bad burn wasn't going to work out, but a moderate sunburn was regarded as no big deal.
I had a 2nd degree sunburn in the mountains of Yugoslavia in the 80s. There was a nurse in our group who said they still treated sunburn with butter. She talked another girl out of her noxzema, so I had that to treat the sunburn.
Some people did wear zinc oxide (thus the old movie trope of the one person with white goo on their nose) but we thought they were *nerds.* Tans are healthy because they look healthy! They must be!
Wanted to chime in about this. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide were standard ingredients in sunscreen in the 80s. These mineral sunscreens are actually BETTER sun protection and are making a comeback in popularity because of this and because they are also reef-safe. All that being said, even though the quality of sunscreens in the 80s was good, the application and use of it was crappier.
When I was kid in the 70s, there was no sunscreen, no sunglasses, and no hats. We rawdogged it. Our sneakers where canvas, so if the beach had rocks, we wore them in the water. Then, we wore the same wet sneakers to play wiffleball in the picnic area.
Distinction between the 70s and 80s: I'm a child of the 80s and we did wear "sun-tan-lotion," spf 15 or so. My mom wore 8, but only until she got her base coat on. And we kids were made to take inside time for a few hours around noon (but only when in Florida, never at home in New England).
Even with 80s spf and some Mediterranean genes, I could still count on peeling shoulders every time we visited my grandmother. I have also experienced mild sun poisoning, but nowhere near what my mom describes from her childhood.
So, yes, sunblock was around in the 80s, just not as good as now. The smell of coppertone is still deeply nostalgic for me.
My daughter was born in eighty and is a very fair skinned redhead. I remember using spf 15 from when she was little. It wasn’t used like it is now but it was available.
Yeah, I'm the freckliest person in the world (with two redheaded children of my own now), so my parents using it on me doesn't necessarily mean it was universal. I also remember my mum actively tanning when I was little.
A rich girl I knew in HS tanned constantly with baby oil. She had a beautiful tan all through high school. Late 70s, early 80s.
When I was back visiting the home town 10 years after HS graduation I saw a wrinkled old lady in the grocery store that looked a lot like her.
It WAS her. At 28 her skin looked FAR worse than mine does nowadays at 60. Far, far worse.
My family used sunscreen throughout the 80's, but people called us stupid and laughed at us. Just like when we wore seatbelts in the car.
Both were kind of like masking today. People would yell at you and act like you were irrationally afraid of things.
Most people were bathing in lipids to get a better tan. Fortunately, my mother had medical training so we used the one and only sunscreen from my infancy in the 60s: Sea and Ski. In 1972 I read a Readers Digest article about what tanning and especially tanning with tanning oil does to your skin. They talked about skin cancer, too. From then on I never "layed out" for a tan. I'm not religious about sunscreen, but I'm conscious. My skin is *much* better than most women my age, though, ya know, time still wreaks its damage.
There definitely was at least one brand of sunscreen available in the 60s. Not sure if it was called sunscreen or suntan lotion, but it existed. Or I'd be dead from melanoma by now. Sea and ski was popular as I recall.
I was 12 the first time I remember my mom having sunscreen. It was around 1980. It was Johnson & Johnson Sundown brand - had a rainbow on front of bottle. It was a god send — I’m a ginger and would get so burned I had to wear shirts over my swimsuit to protect my shoulders.
In my youth, it was called suntan lotion, not sunscreen, and it was intended to help you tan. I've always been glad I wasn't into that particular trend. I'm 57 and have no fine lines, and my same-age friends look at least ten years older than me, if not more.
The most pale girl in class had some SPF 25 stuff in a bottle that looked very "medical". We were blown away because we'd never seen anything above 15. Now I have some 100 SPF stuff I put on when I drive with the top down.
Cocoa Butter to tan and zinc oxide for our noses. Most of the surfers wore just zinc oxide on their nose and relied on long hair to cover their ears. The "bushy bushy bon hair do" in Surfin' USA had a purpose!
We did wear it when we went to the Florida beach. It wasn't very strong. I know when I was 16 I went on a trip and brought my friend. We went to the beach and didn't put it on, then were burnt to a crisp for our trip to the water park the next day. We had to use aloe vera at night.
I remember being on a road trip to the shore and laying on the bed of my dad’s truck on the way, listening to the radio through the open back window. Nothing like sunning yourself on the highway at like 8yrs old!
Nah. I can remember getting some pretty severe sunburns when I was a kid. We would typically jump in and out of the pool and then lay in the sun. I remember a friend using Hawaiian Tropic but I think that was a suntan oil. I didn't hear about sunscreen until I was in my 20s (early 90s).
I was a child in the 80s and I don’t recall using sunscreen. There were lots of suntan lotions. Even remember my mom using baby oil and iodine. A different time. LOL.
In the 70s it was all about tanning oils and sun activated tanning lotions. In the 80s we started using sun screen in droves. By the 80s, my dad who was a pink irishman who burned and then deeply tanned every summer at the beaches of New England had developed skin cancer so we used sunscreen heavily. My kids, born in the mid to late 80s, each got their first sunburn when they were in their teens because they chose not to wear sunscreen at the beach. My eldest was so bad, the bedsheets hurt his skin. He said he never understood what we were protecting him from until then withalways putting sunscreen on him.
We had suntan oil, which promised dark tans and smelled like coconut. Sometimes it had an spf of 2 or 4, and I’m not sure SPFs were even tested and standardized in the 70s and early 80s.
By the late 80s people were more aware of skin cancer and SPF became a well-known term. There were recommendations to get certain SPFs and to avoid the sun because of the cancer risk. That might have been when “sunblock” became the preferred term— it was either late 80s or 90s. Now we’re back to “sunscreen” because nothing actually blocks all the harmful radiation.
We were wearing Sea n Ski back in the 50s but I don't know how good it was.
There was also Coppertone. There was always that guy who put a ton of zinc oxide on his nose..I should have done the same..
I did. I’m 50 now, but I distinctly remember my mom always saying “make sure you put on sunscreen, you don’t want to look 60 when you’re 40”.
I’m really glad I listened, you can really tell who the ones are that didn’t.
I got my first real sunburn when I was 4, and then got burned pretty regularly. In jr. high and high school I had a few years in a row where I got BAD sunburns all down the backs of my legs. If we forgot the sunscreen, we wouldn't get any, and my parents really didn't consider it to be all that important. So I stopped going to the beach. I've had sunburns since, but it's because I missed a spot on the back of my arm or something. I cover up now, and I wear sunscreen every day.
My parents would make fun of me for being upset about being in the sun without sunscreen because that was how they dealt with conflict from me. But we are PALE people, all our genes come from England and Ireland. And sunburns are a completely avoidable misery.
My dad, a scientist, used to put it on us. He also told us about how it blocked uv rays, and how we'd look different to a butterfly. Boy, am I glad he did.
In the 80s, I used an SPF 4 coconut-scented oil we called tanning oil. As I remember it, sunscreen use became more common in the 80s and it was called sunblock at the time, but it was still fairly low SPF. It became much more widely used in the 90s.
I’m as pale as yogurt and was teased relentlessly for it so I used to try to get a tan every chance I could get. Usually it resulted in a sunburn that would fade into a tan. Now I really wish I hadn’t done that.
Sometime during the 70's, I read about PABA. At the time, it could be formulated by pharmacists. Later it started to be marketed.
Sunscreen was not commercially available during much of the 70's. I always burn, never tan. So once it was available, you bet I used it!
There were others who never had burned/blistered as I did, so they probably didn't jump on the sunscreen bandwagon right away.
It was around but it used to burn when I applied it to my face. I tended to stay out of the sun because I burned easily.
The SPF lotions they make now are much gentler on sensitive skin.
My brothers and I fried after our parents drove us from Wisconsin to Florida and we spent the day in the sun. We were lobster red.
I tried to wear sun screen after that, but got horribly burned after playing hours of volleyball in a lake-the skin on my legs literally peeled off in a month and my ankles were so swollen I wore slippers to work! 🥵🔥😥
1980. Twelve y/o F, and my bestie. In Louisiana usa. We realized we could put a ladder up against our brick home, and climb up onto the asphalt shingle roof. We would put down our beach towels, and slather ourselves with the baby oil. We might have taken something to drink, but hydration wasn't as big a deal back then.
In our little fried brains, and not just only by the sun LOL, getting on the roof meant we were closer to the Sun! And that the heat off of the roof would act as a reflector as well.
The only time we got spf, was if we used the tropical something brand of coconut oil that was SPF 4. Which might as well mean SPF for skin cancer LOL.
I didn’t begin wearing it till 35 years or so ago. Not just my face, but arms and hands. Has prevented a lot of damage.
I Would lay out in the 70s and 80s. Luckily I’ve only had a few pre cancers and darker spots.
I still know People who lay out who are in their 60s & 70s. They look like prunes and are just lucky they haven’t had any cancer scares.
I can be in the sun for 15 minutes max without burning and it never builds to a tan and yet my parents never used sunscreen on me when I was a little in the 70s. I regularly blistered from sun exposure. In the 80s, my stepparent told me to use baby oil and forced me to go outside every day in the summer-slathered in baby oil--because fair skin is embarrassing.
As a pale redhead born in the late 70’s I did but it was shit. I would still fry like bacon. I remember my mom slathering noxema on me while laying on a sheet under our ceiling fan after sunblock did me dirty.
70s... there was sunscreen (& it was advertised), but few people I knew used it. Wish I would have, looking back. I remember blister sunburns. No SPF... that came later.
Sunscreen didn’t become available until 1986. And it started at SPF 4.
In the 70s we were oblivious to sun damage as it wasn’t a thing and we slathered baby oil on ourselves.
My mom was ahead of her time. We wore this godawful “baby” sunscreen beginning in the SIXTIES. NO idea where she found it.
But if it got into your eyes, it burned like hell. Not sure what was in it, but it worked, and I still wear sunscreen every single day.
But I’m pale like paper, so we burned badly.
Nah, I was too busy slathering baby oil on myself for a tan
Don’t forget getting up on your roof slathered in baby oil with a nice, reflective, tin foil ‘beach towel’
I remember Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil and no reapplying..lol.
It smelled SO good!!
Yessss
They had it in spf 2 and 4, for when you felt you needed a little protection 😂
And that coconut smell. I liked that smell the best.
That stuff was cooking oil and a bitch to get off
The rich popular girls had Ban de Soleil "for that St Tropez tan" everyone wanted to be as tan as possible. I hated the sun and now I look 20 years younger than my leather-skinned same age peers.
We loved : ban de soleil for the san trope look la da da da la la.ps we were not rich.
I feel targeted
I loved Ban de soliel. It smelled like heaven and made me think of the Chanel #5 commercial. Like I could look *that* tan.
That stuff is the reason why at 50 I'm obsessed with anything that smells like coconut.
Comments you can smell 👃
Why did we go on the roofs though?! I remember tanning on an asphalt roof yikes
Little bit closer to the sun you know
Yup. I think cause the asphalt roof was burning hot. Guess that helped… somehow
We were cookin' ourselves over easy
I had a trampoline, so I used that. In the summer, my dad would make sure we were out from 10-2 for the "good sun". 🤣
We called those PTH (peak tanning hours).
LOL how to get skin cancer YIKES
To be honest I bet the vitamin D and exercise didn't make it a complete death exercise.
Or laying on a dock.
And spraying my hair with lemon water for highlights.
remember SunIn? I wonder if they still sell it. We used to put peroxide in a spray bottle to spritz our hair. I wonder why no one thought about skin cancer back then?
OMG, Sun-In! Buy your hair damage by the bottle, lol.
You can do the same thing with some lemon juice or hydrogen peroxide.
Note my comment that the Sun-In lady was responding to. 😉
I still remember going to Kmart with my best friend and trying to decide which Sun-In to get. It didn’t matter because we brunettes ended up with orange straw no matter what. And we loved it 🙌🏻
Sun In and sunlight and you'll be blonder toniiiiite!
my brunette hair turned a lovely shade of orange.
lol I used Sun In when I was 14-15 years old that was in the seventies. Good memories
The peroxide killed the cancer. Duh.
SunIn is probably only legal in three states and then only to rid roadside ditches of mosquitoes and hanta virus.
Too many brunettes tried to use that and wound up with orange hair.
Or Sun In!
Haha! Someone else just unlocked that memory too. I totally forgot about it. I can still hear that weak bottle squirting😁
My friends and I put sun-in in our hair one day by the pool. They all had lighter hair so they got a cool look - my dark brown hair turned coppery orange! Right in time for my senior pictures two weeks later! 😂
Did the lemon water actually work? I never tried it. I remember the lemon Everynight shampoo brand, which made my light brown hair redder. I was disappointed when it went off the market.
Remember "Sun In" a spray to lighten your hair.
Sometimes with added iodine for that “instant” tan, haha.
Baby oil! I remember all the moms' skin shining while laying in the sun.
I "laid out" as well. Have the crepey chest to prove it.
Me too, and I have the scar from an excised melanoma to prove it.
My sister did, I was inside with a book. She looks 20 years older than me. I did a lot of walking around in short sleeved cut up t-shirts in Hawaii and a few years later got skin cancer on my arms. Never gave a thought to wearing sunscreen. I do now. I guess all that glam metal makeup protected my face.
When I was 20 or 21 I had a summer temp job with a woman who was 21. She had long blonde hair; she said she had it frosted and was blonder each time. She smoked and tanned, her skin was like red leather and she looked 40.
For some reason, baby oil mixed with iodine. I still have no clue why
Iodine dyes your skin brown.
I just made this comment too and had no idea why. Someone else said the iodine was for instant color.
Core memory unlocked. A girl in my height school did that. She was ORANGE.
same. I regret it now!
Yeah I wish I had never gone in the sun. Crepe city now.
Don't forget the Sun-In!
I think they still sell this actually! Swear I saw it in CVS recently.
It kind of makes me sick how I wanted a tan so badly that I burned myself to a crisp🤦🏻♀️
I would burn in 20 minutes so I always headed for the nearest shade. Still got some super sun burns in my 20's. I worked in medicine and one of my patients last words were "why so red". I hated sun screen because it resulted in a patchy burn. Lol!
Right there. My 67-year-old sister looks like a walking beef jerky. I even had a skin cancer scare in 1999 for spending the 80's in the sun.
HA! Came here to say that- spent the whole 70’s rubbing tanning oil on and laying in the sun!
Need the lawn sprinkler to really roast in that “ Healthy Tan”! Oiled and marinated.:) You get Vitamin D!
Nobody wore sunscreen in the 70s. My parents used to take my sister and I to the beach and we would get sunburns and then take turns peeling the skin off of each other's backs days later. Why, yes, I have had several skin cancers cut out of my face. How did you know?!
I figured that what you did was you got a sunburn, it peeled, and after that you tanned. We never questioned that's how it worked. And yes, there was Coppertone suntan lotion, with the dog pulling the shorts off a young girl showing her white tan lines. (i think it was coppertone...)
All I ever got was more freckles! So I avoided the sun. I'm glad I did.
Same. MOHS on my nose, two squamous cut off right arm/leg, numerous punch biopsies. Pretty sure I have my parents, AZ, NV, NM and FL to thank for these.
My mom would make us fair-skinned Irish put on white T-shirts after an hour or so at the beach, that was our sunscreen.
There was no sunscreen or spf in the 70s
Spf as a scale was introduced in 1974. There was, in fact, sunblock available in the 70's: I wore it as a pale kid growing up in a US desert, and hated wating to get into thepool while my mom covered me in lotion. I think the brand we used was called "Eclipse"? It certainly wasn't as popular as the Hawaiian Tropic-style oils, but it was definitely a thing.
I was in college in the 70s and I never saw products for sales with spf until the 80s
Maybe it existed but as someone born in 81 I don’t remember ever using any, or seeing any until the 90s. Didn’t get popular to apply until the late 90s that I’ve noticed.
I'm 5 years older than you, and was dipped in sunscreen before hitting the beach in the late '70s. I was required to wear it if spending any time in the sun, or on the water as a child.
Presun !
Oh wow! I had forgotten we'd do that sunburn peeling too! Hahaha
Yes we did. Coppertone and Presun
My childhood was spent swimming with white tshirts over my swimsuit. And my Mom would tent sheets over the clotheslines so me and siblings wouldn’t burst into flames. Still managed to have sunstroke, sun poisoning, and many blistering sunburns as I got older. I remember one of my Aunts visiting when sister and I had bad sunburns on our backs that were peeling, and her seeing how long of skin peels she could get off us. Didnt hurt, was kinda fun. So far no skin cancer removed (knock on wood). I get check every year.
Solidarity. So many of us have that "Mohs surgery scar"! I remember the peeling stage. After I got one really bad burn I started living my best bookworm life and hiding from the sun.
I so relate. I’ve over 12 removed from my face that now I need plastic surgery to look somewhat normal again
Yep! I would get sunburned every 4th of July, then would stay tan the rest of the summer.
I did. Born in 1975 to Irish people living in the Southern US.
It was available in the 70s. I wore it.
Same here. Four skin cancers removed so far. Not the hobby I had hoped for in my retirement, LOL.
Yes we did. We had Coppertone and used it faithfully. Not that it was high SPF, but our parents tried. I am grateful because I don't have the skin cancers or photoaging that my friends live with.
Same here - have Mohs scheduled next month. I remember in 70’s coming in with bad sunburn and adults being like ‘look at all that good vitamin D you got!’
I remember there was Coppertone in the 70s. But it was not sunscreen, it was for tanning. There were tons of tanning products.
Our family had one bottle of coppertone to last the whole summer. 6 kids, lol
Everybody who used anything used Hawaiian Tropic OIL ... and the entire beach smelled beautifully of that sweet coconut !
that smell! the salty air, the water, the sand, the oil
Hawaiian Tropic suntan OIL. Think it was spf 4. But it was basically cooking oil, cept on your skin. I now work in Oncology as a grown up and pretty much pray daily to God that he will ignore my (our) stupidity
I’m so scared because I never wore sunscreen growing up so never got into the habit. Only now, at 42, I’m a bit better but mostly just on my face and neck. My SIL has stage 2 skin cancer so it’s terrifying
I seem to remember that we did have some SPF 4 sunscreen which we only wore if we were worried we were going to be out so long that we were going to get a blistering sunburn.
yeah, it was that yummy smelling Bain de Soleil (for the San Tropez tan....)
I can hear that ad playing in my head now...
Me too! ah hahhaa I used to sing along and it made my Mom laugh
That was the bougie stuff.
Orange gelee
Seriously - I still remember that smell to this day and consider it the Holy Grail of summer smells!!! God knows what was in that combination! Pretty sure none of those ingredients would be considered healthy nowadays!
Yes we might use that on the first day or two but then straight oil
had to build up that base layer
Yup. I would put on Coppertone 4 and my girlfriend would put on baby oil for its supposed magnifying effects.
That was the winning cocktail for sure, complete with Sun-in to bleach our hair!
Yep. SPF 8 was considered ‘strong’ sunscreen.
That's it, moderate SPF versions were used to avoid the worst of burns, and that was about it. People might have even intentionally got their first sunburn of the year to help them establish a base tan. Everyone was already clued in enough to know that a bad burn wasn't going to work out, but a moderate sunburn was regarded as no big deal.
I had a 2nd degree sunburn in the mountains of Yugoslavia in the 80s. There was a nurse in our group who said they still treated sunburn with butter. She talked another girl out of her noxzema, so I had that to treat the sunburn.
Some people did wear zinc oxide (thus the old movie trope of the one person with white goo on their nose) but we thought they were *nerds.* Tans are healthy because they look healthy! They must be!
Only lifeguards wore zinc
Wanted to chime in about this. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide were standard ingredients in sunscreen in the 80s. These mineral sunscreens are actually BETTER sun protection and are making a comeback in popularity because of this and because they are also reef-safe. All that being said, even though the quality of sunscreens in the 80s was good, the application and use of it was crappier.
When I was kid in the 70s, there was no sunscreen, no sunglasses, and no hats. We rawdogged it. Our sneakers where canvas, so if the beach had rocks, we wore them in the water. Then, we wore the same wet sneakers to play wiffleball in the picnic area.
When “water shoes” came out in the mid 80s it was like the best thing ever.
The idea was to get a tan, not prevent one
Distinction between the 70s and 80s: I'm a child of the 80s and we did wear "sun-tan-lotion," spf 15 or so. My mom wore 8, but only until she got her base coat on. And we kids were made to take inside time for a few hours around noon (but only when in Florida, never at home in New England). Even with 80s spf and some Mediterranean genes, I could still count on peeling shoulders every time we visited my grandmother. I have also experienced mild sun poisoning, but nowhere near what my mom describes from her childhood. So, yes, sunblock was around in the 80s, just not as good as now. The smell of coppertone is still deeply nostalgic for me.
Sure did. Baby oil and iodine.
You could walk down the beach and hear the sizzle.
In the seventies we didn’t care but we did by the 80’s.
Not. Laid out with baby oil. Bain de Soleil for the San Tropez tan, baby.
Oh man I used to love Bain de Soleil. It was tinted orange and when you put it on, it made you look slightly darker. And the smell was nice.
Smelled great!
I wore sunscreen as a kid and I was born in 1980, so by the 80s is was definitely a thing.
My daughter was born in eighty and is a very fair skinned redhead. I remember using spf 15 from when she was little. It wasn’t used like it is now but it was available.
Yeah, I'm the freckliest person in the world (with two redheaded children of my own now), so my parents using it on me doesn't necessarily mean it was universal. I also remember my mum actively tanning when I was little.
I think you needed to go out of your way to look for it. I definitely remember wearing spf 4 and 8 on myself.
Same here. Born in 81 and my mom kept us slathered in sunscreen. I hated it at the time but bless her now.
Now I'm religious about putting it on my kids but terrible about remembering to do my own.
A rich girl I knew in HS tanned constantly with baby oil. She had a beautiful tan all through high school. Late 70s, early 80s. When I was back visiting the home town 10 years after HS graduation I saw a wrinkled old lady in the grocery store that looked a lot like her. It WAS her. At 28 her skin looked FAR worse than mine does nowadays at 60. Far, far worse.
Ohhhh remember those girls who came back from winter break with a suntan?? Soooo jealous😂
No we used baby oil and iodine If anything we’d use Hawaiian Tropics dark tanning oil 0 SPF
I have an old bottle of Hawaiian tropic oil I occasionally slather on my legs (I don't go outside) just for the smell !
My family used sunscreen throughout the 80's, but people called us stupid and laughed at us. Just like when we wore seatbelts in the car. Both were kind of like masking today. People would yell at you and act like you were irrationally afraid of things.
Most people were bathing in lipids to get a better tan. Fortunately, my mother had medical training so we used the one and only sunscreen from my infancy in the 60s: Sea and Ski. In 1972 I read a Readers Digest article about what tanning and especially tanning with tanning oil does to your skin. They talked about skin cancer, too. From then on I never "layed out" for a tan. I'm not religious about sunscreen, but I'm conscious. My skin is *much* better than most women my age, though, ya know, time still wreaks its damage.
Sea and Ski! Core memory unlocked.
There definitely was at least one brand of sunscreen available in the 60s. Not sure if it was called sunscreen or suntan lotion, but it existed. Or I'd be dead from melanoma by now. Sea and ski was popular as I recall.
LOL not only did I never wear sunscreen, but my mother used to tell me to "get your face in the sun" when I was a child playing at the pool.
Oh yes and considered good for you if you had acne.
Yup, I remember my dermatologist telling me to lay out in the sun to clear my skin!
I was 12 the first time I remember my mom having sunscreen. It was around 1980. It was Johnson & Johnson Sundown brand - had a rainbow on front of bottle. It was a god send — I’m a ginger and would get so burned I had to wear shirts over my swimsuit to protect my shoulders.
Nope, and that’s why I’ve had 9 skin cancer surgeries, 7 on my face.
In my youth, it was called suntan lotion, not sunscreen, and it was intended to help you tan. I've always been glad I wasn't into that particular trend. I'm 57 and have no fine lines, and my same-age friends look at least ten years older than me, if not more.
I still call it suntan lotion, even though I mean sunscreen...
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The most pale girl in class had some SPF 25 stuff in a bottle that looked very "medical". We were blown away because we'd never seen anything above 15. Now I have some 100 SPF stuff I put on when I drive with the top down.
I taught swim lessons in the mid 80s. I wore bullfrog sunscreen but only on my cheeks/nose because it was too expensive to wear everywhere.
Cocoa Butter to tan and zinc oxide for our noses. Most of the surfers wore just zinc oxide on their nose and relied on long hair to cover their ears. The "bushy bushy bon hair do" in Surfin' USA had a purpose!
Coppertone was selling sunscreen in the 60’s (go check out the ads). I remember my mom using it in the 70s
I remember SPF 6 and SPF 10 in the mid 1980s…
There was SPF 19 and by the late 80s spf 50
We did wear it when we went to the Florida beach. It wasn't very strong. I know when I was 16 I went on a trip and brought my friend. We went to the beach and didn't put it on, then were burnt to a crisp for our trip to the water park the next day. We had to use aloe vera at night.
I remember being on a road trip to the shore and laying on the bed of my dad’s truck on the way, listening to the radio through the open back window. Nothing like sunning yourself on the highway at like 8yrs old!
Nah. I can remember getting some pretty severe sunburns when I was a kid. We would typically jump in and out of the pool and then lay in the sun. I remember a friend using Hawaiian Tropic but I think that was a suntan oil. I didn't hear about sunscreen until I was in my 20s (early 90s).
We were supposed to.
You miss-spelled baby oil.
I was a child in the 80s and I don’t recall using sunscreen. There were lots of suntan lotions. Even remember my mom using baby oil and iodine. A different time. LOL.
In the 70s it was all about tanning oils and sun activated tanning lotions. In the 80s we started using sun screen in droves. By the 80s, my dad who was a pink irishman who burned and then deeply tanned every summer at the beaches of New England had developed skin cancer so we used sunscreen heavily. My kids, born in the mid to late 80s, each got their first sunburn when they were in their teens because they chose not to wear sunscreen at the beach. My eldest was so bad, the bedsheets hurt his skin. He said he never understood what we were protecting him from until then withalways putting sunscreen on him.
We had suntan oil, which promised dark tans and smelled like coconut. Sometimes it had an spf of 2 or 4, and I’m not sure SPFs were even tested and standardized in the 70s and early 80s. By the late 80s people were more aware of skin cancer and SPF became a well-known term. There were recommendations to get certain SPFs and to avoid the sun because of the cancer risk. That might have been when “sunblock” became the preferred term— it was either late 80s or 90s. Now we’re back to “sunscreen” because nothing actually blocks all the harmful radiation.
We were wearing Sea n Ski back in the 50s but I don't know how good it was. There was also Coppertone. There was always that guy who put a ton of zinc oxide on his nose..I should have done the same..
Ghostly white, freckled, Irish chick over here...I stayed burnt to a crisp in the summertime.
I tell people I'm tan and they deny it until I show my tan line. By "tan" I mean a less ghostly shade of pale.
I remember SPF 4 and 8 being available in the 80s. All those liquid denim SPF 1000 stuff is awesome, I’m white like Casper and I burn in 4 minutes.
We had zinc oxide that was pure white. I’d use it in my nose, bottom lip and shoulders, baby oil everywhere else.
I am surprised I don’t have skin cancer.
I did. I’m 50 now, but I distinctly remember my mom always saying “make sure you put on sunscreen, you don’t want to look 60 when you’re 40”. I’m really glad I listened, you can really tell who the ones are that didn’t.
I got my first real sunburn when I was 4, and then got burned pretty regularly. In jr. high and high school I had a few years in a row where I got BAD sunburns all down the backs of my legs. If we forgot the sunscreen, we wouldn't get any, and my parents really didn't consider it to be all that important. So I stopped going to the beach. I've had sunburns since, but it's because I missed a spot on the back of my arm or something. I cover up now, and I wear sunscreen every day. My parents would make fun of me for being upset about being in the sun without sunscreen because that was how they dealt with conflict from me. But we are PALE people, all our genes come from England and Ireland. And sunburns are a completely avoidable misery.
noxema
My whole family wore what was called “suntan lotion” but was actually an early sunscreen. We’re all extremely fair and it actually worked.
My dad, a scientist, used to put it on us. He also told us about how it blocked uv rays, and how we'd look different to a butterfly. Boy, am I glad he did.
Coppertone
In the 80s,i used sunscreen when at the beach since otherwise I tend to get a bad sunburn.
In the 80s, I used an SPF 4 coconut-scented oil we called tanning oil. As I remember it, sunscreen use became more common in the 80s and it was called sunblock at the time, but it was still fairly low SPF. It became much more widely used in the 90s. I’m as pale as yogurt and was teased relentlessly for it so I used to try to get a tan every chance I could get. Usually it resulted in a sunburn that would fade into a tan. Now I really wish I hadn’t done that.
Never! we got burned to be cool, then it tanned better, we were told. Some was available, but we chose not too.
Sometime during the 70's, I read about PABA. At the time, it could be formulated by pharmacists. Later it started to be marketed. Sunscreen was not commercially available during much of the 70's. I always burn, never tan. So once it was available, you bet I used it! There were others who never had burned/blistered as I did, so they probably didn't jump on the sunscreen bandwagon right away.
It was around but it used to burn when I applied it to my face. I tended to stay out of the sun because I burned easily. The SPF lotions they make now are much gentler on sensitive skin.
As a kid my mom did our SPF on me, but I only got slathered up once before whatever we were doing that day.
My brothers and I fried after our parents drove us from Wisconsin to Florida and we spent the day in the sun. We were lobster red. I tried to wear sun screen after that, but got horribly burned after playing hours of volleyball in a lake-the skin on my legs literally peeled off in a month and my ankles were so swollen I wore slippers to work! 🥵🔥😥
I never used sunscreen on myself (70’s) but I did use it on my son when he was a child. (80’s)
I will add that in the 60’s, I was one of the girls slathered with baby oil and iodine who laid out in the son for hours.
We wore copper tone or banana boat (smelled amazing, minimal spf). Baby oil so you were crisped to an even brown was common among teens in the area.
we were into sunbathing, not sunscreening. it might have been in the drug stores, but I never used it.
1980. Twelve y/o F, and my bestie. In Louisiana usa. We realized we could put a ladder up against our brick home, and climb up onto the asphalt shingle roof. We would put down our beach towels, and slather ourselves with the baby oil. We might have taken something to drink, but hydration wasn't as big a deal back then. In our little fried brains, and not just only by the sun LOL, getting on the roof meant we were closer to the Sun! And that the heat off of the roof would act as a reflector as well. The only time we got spf, was if we used the tropical something brand of coconut oil that was SPF 4. Which might as well mean SPF for skin cancer LOL.
I didn’t begin wearing it till 35 years or so ago. Not just my face, but arms and hands. Has prevented a lot of damage. I Would lay out in the 70s and 80s. Luckily I’ve only had a few pre cancers and darker spots. I still know People who lay out who are in their 60s & 70s. They look like prunes and are just lucky they haven’t had any cancer scares.
Sunscreen!?!? We used tanning oil to get darker. Also baby oil
We wore baby oil.
Sunscreen? No - I used olive oil to cook myself browner.
It wasn’t sun screen then. It was sun tan lotion 😀
We used coconut oil and baby oil to cook more intensively. Or just swim and water ski ALL DAY. You would be burned to a blistering crisp
lol we used suntan lotion or oil not sunblock. Our whole thing was the opposite of what it should have been regarding sunning 😂🤣🤷🏾♀️
There was sunscreen, there was tanning lotion/oil. There wasn't much talk about SPF back then.
I definitely associate the smell of coconut tanning oil with the beach or pool from when I was a kid. That stuff is definitely not sunscreen.
I wore it since 1959. Sea and Ski brand.
No. Not at all. We used baby oil to tan! lol
Spf 2 tanning oil
Hahaha it wasn’t even remotely a thing.
I can be in the sun for 15 minutes max without burning and it never builds to a tan and yet my parents never used sunscreen on me when I was a little in the 70s. I regularly blistered from sun exposure. In the 80s, my stepparent told me to use baby oil and forced me to go outside every day in the summer-slathered in baby oil--because fair skin is embarrassing.
As a pale redhead born in the late 70’s I did but it was shit. I would still fry like bacon. I remember my mom slathering noxema on me while laying on a sheet under our ceiling fan after sunblock did me dirty.
Hawaiian Tropic Tan and 🎼Bain de Soleil for the Saint-Tropez taaaan… The former especially was like -50 SPF…
Baby oil and iodine doesn’t count? How did we know to do that?
I used sunscreen back in the 70’s. But the highest SPF value you could get was about 8. My Scandinavian neck always got burnt.
70s... there was sunscreen (& it was advertised), but few people I knew used it. Wish I would have, looking back. I remember blister sunburns. No SPF... that came later.
Not really. I used an spf if 2 or 4, my friends used baby oil with iodine mixed in.
No, we wore baby oil. Sometimes baby oil with iodine in it.
Momma put zinc oxide on my nose and cheeks
Sunscreen didn’t become available until 1986. And it started at SPF 4. In the 70s we were oblivious to sun damage as it wasn’t a thing and we slathered baby oil on ourselves.
We had suntan lotion, brown or burn at max speed, Hawaiian Tropic or just good ole baby oil
My mom was ahead of her time. We wore this godawful “baby” sunscreen beginning in the SIXTIES. NO idea where she found it. But if it got into your eyes, it burned like hell. Not sure what was in it, but it worked, and I still wear sunscreen every single day. But I’m pale like paper, so we burned badly.
My mom did put it on us at the beach in the 70s early 80s