Confession of an Extremely White Woman

I was a freckly kid. When a neighbor boy poked fun at me because I had a “dirty face”, my mom explained to me that I had fair skin. She said it in such a way that it was like she was letting me in on a secret, and our stupid neighbor boy had no idea that I came from royalty.

As I grew into a teenager, I realized having fair skin mainly meant that if I wanted to get even the slightest color on my ghastly, ghostly whiteness, I would have to endure a sunburn first. So every summer, I baked in the sun until I resembled a lobster and screamed in pain from the touch of the clothes on my back. After a couple of weeks, the burn turned into a tan. It was ever so slight. Unless I pulled my clothing back to where the sun never shone, you wouldn’t realize the tan existed.

This was a never ending process for me. I would lay out in the backyard until I was so hot you might as well have thrown me onto a charcoal grill. It was grueling. But I was determined.

During the spring of my senior year, I was looking forward to prom. My mom sewed my dress--a pale pink, dotted Swiss, empire-waisted dress with puff sleeves. It had a scoop neckline edged in a white ruffle. I loved the dress but knew exactly what I had to do if I didn’t want to look like Casper’s sister.

About a month before prom I started working on it. I baked in the sun to get good and burnt. And I did. I was so burnt that it made me physically sick. It took a while to recover, but that was a small price to pay for how I was going to look in my pale pink prom dress with the white ruffle around the neckline. 

Once the pain from my sunburn subsided, my skin peeled, mostly on my chest—right where the white ruffle was to show off my tan. When the skin peel came off, so did my tan! 

It was only a week until prom and I was undeterred in my quest to look fabulous. So I laid out again to burn again. And this time everywhere I peeled, I blistered. It was a mess.

Now, days before prom, I obsessed about drying up the blisters. But then, as the ooze was disappearing, a scabbiness took over, and I had a chest of crackling pork rinds framed with a white ruffle. I tried to mask it with make-up, which only made it worse. And that’s the way I went to my senior prom.

I’m thinking about this incident today, not because it’s prom time, but because this morning I went for my six-month exam with the dermatologist. About five years ago I had a melanoma removed and, since then, little chunks have been harvested from my flesh on a regular basis. So many places on my skin worry me that, before I go to the doctor, I circle them all with a pen to make sure none are missed. Invariably, the ones that concern the doctor are the ones I completely ignore; I have no idea what I’m looking for. 

If I could do a “Back to the Future” trip to visit my teenage self, I would warn her. I’d tell her to wear sunblock, cover herself, and avoid U-V rays, even if it means living like a vampire. I’d tell her that fair skin is better than skin with chunks removed, and it’s a helluva a lot better than cancer. Of course, there are many other things I’d like to tell her, too. Things that would have changed the course of her life. But that only works for Marty McFly. The rest of us are victims of our own ignorance. It’s too late to change some of our choices. That's why it’s so important that we learn to do better with the choices we make moving forward. These days, sunblock is my friend.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.