I met a French guy once who was so hot-damn fun.
Our first date was a frigid February night at The Moose's Tooth, a popular brewery in Anchorage, Alaska. I was up north through a series of events, and he had come from France because his friends had gifted him a Heli Ski package for his 40th birthday.
I arrived first at the brewery and waited near the host's stand. When he came flurrying in through the back door on a gust of cold wind, late, and looking out of place wearing a faux-fur-lined, shiny green parka in what was otherwise clearly the land of the Carhart, I realized he was lost.
We sat at the bar. He was witty, playful, and verbally creative; the last trait I discovered hit all the right buttons for me. We ordered a flight of beers, and when it came, he was flabbergasted at the amount of alcohol presented to just two people. We drank hardly anything. Instead, we talked. Most of our conversation is now lost to my regrettable memory. Still, I recall telling him I'd recently spent a month in Italy. He responded that the Italians and French had a long-standing rivalry:
Who was more fashionable of the two?
Who was the better cook?
And then, lowering his voice a respectable octave and looking me in the eye, who was the better lover?
How could I not?
He said, "Come visit my home, we'll tour, we'll eat, you'll meet my friends." I answered him with an enthusiastic yes, yes, yes, and yes. Then I did just that, and it was a spectacular affair.
But like all fabulous but ill-fated romances, his ask and my responses were effortless until that first thing came up. He was French but lived in Spain in a resort community in Cataluyna, a region south of the French border and north of Barcelona. He wanted me to be light-weight and carefree, which he expressed with a straightforward summation of a sentence: you can wear a bikini on the beach.
Falling in love is a stylish thing to do. It involves perfume and lingerie and flirty little outfits. I wasn't ashamed of my body, but I'd gone to Alaska in the winter partly because it was an enjoyable way to avoid UV rays, which were far too plentiful in my native Arizona.
The sun burdened me; I would never feel untroubled in a bikini. How would I flit around Costa Brava and Ibiza and las playas todas with all that reflected light screaming at me? How could I look cute in the sun when all I wanted to do was hide from it?
I never really figured it out.
Once in Madrid, I fell in line behind a group of Japanese tourists sightseeing in total sun protection mode. They carried parasols and wore sun sleeves, gloves, hats, and face masks. Those were my people! That was my tribe. But how cute is compele cover-up? How attractive would My First French boyfriend have found me had I put on a facekini to swim in the Mediterranean?
I was coming from a point of fear. Fear is hands-down unsexy, and that's exactly how I felt. Should I just date red-headed Vikings from Scandinavia who like to hang out underground? Maybe. Burly gingers are super attractive with all that color and texture going on.
But can, or more importantly should, that be the end of the discussion? Should I just shrink my social pool? Should I just avoid friends and lovers who enjoy the sun and take up some sort of martial art philosophy designed to deflect a problem rather than address it straight on. As the fair-headed Scots put it: no, say I!
It's time to flip the script on sun protection and UPF clothing. Take, for example, ski gear. It protects from the dangers of the sport and the dangers of the element: the cold. When we see someone dressed for the cold, we accept whatever weird fashion is in style. Puffy orange onesies? Why not? Suspenders. Sure! Funny-looking boots? Go for it! And we do more than just accept, don't we? We give the person dressed for the cold an identity that says this person is fit enough to traverse mountains.
UV rays are an element, too. Depending upon the circumstances, it takes about the same time for skin to sunburn as it does for frostbite. But do we ever talk about people using UPF clothing and sun protection technology? What's the narrative there?
It's time we write our own story. A brave one. A daring one. The one where a person protecting their skin is the person with the moxie to take on the sun. Now that's sexy. That's confidence. That's drop-dead smart. That's cute.