Of sunshine and sunscreens!

Veenu Singh laments about beauty going artificial and the sheer lack of sunshine in our lives, thanks to aggressive marketing

Beauty is nature's first gift to a woman and the first that it takes away. I read this statement many years ago, and since then it has stuck in my mind. Today, whenever I am doing a beauty or even a health story, this thought is the first one to cross my mind.



In the last decade or so, the amount of emphasis that has been put on looks and weight is not funny.

Sunscreen

You may meet a teenager, someone in their mid-twenties or late forties, all of them (though women generally are the ones obsessed with both looks and weight, men, let me assure you, are not far behind) only seem to have this on their mind. And, everybody seems to be cashing on it -be it magazines (telling you how to look good, we too are guilty of it) to brands selling you stuff for every possible skin problem. Dark spots? Make them vanish says one while the other coaxes you to go out in the sun and play.Talking about the sun, ever since we realized the importance of dabbing on a sunscreen, it seems that none of us want to be out in the sun without it even for a second. What happened to the time when you would just sit in the winter sun, letting your body soak in as much of vitamin D as possible?

Beauty

In fact, very recently, I actually met a doctor who 'revealed' to me a shocking fact about sunscreens. Did you know that even an overdose of sunscreen can be bad for you or using the wrong kind of sunscreen can have adverse effects on your skin? Ya, unbelievable as it may sound, it is true. Well, with the hot days already upon us, I think I shall reveal more about this very soon.

Till then, just try and go back to nature a bit more. Look for natural things for your skin and stay healthy.

HT Brunch, March 11

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