Evil Sunscreen

I have a bone to pick with white-cast sunscreen.

I'm not fond of extraordinarily obvious funny business. I will attempt to use subtle humor, but I'm not one to openly be a clown. That's why I'll never forgive CeraVe for what it forced me to become.

In the summer of 2025, I stayed at my home institution to conduct research. Because it was so hot and bright, and I had a deathly fear of melanoma, I decided to go to Target and buy some sunscreen. My previous solution to blocking the sun was just wearing layers, but heatstroke was starting to sound menacing in 90-degree weather.

I barely wore sunscreen throughout my early years and subsequently always wondered why the media portrayed lifeguards as people with white noses. I'd go on to have an epiphany when I bought some expensive CeraVe SPF 50 sunscreen on a hot summer day nearing 3 p.m. Sometime between 3 and 4 p.m., I applied that sunscreen to my face, and I applied a lot of it. Come dinnertime, at 4:30 p.m. or so, I returned to my housing quarters, headed for the cafeteria, and grabbed dinner with a friend. We sat down, and I knew something was up because he was guffawing and giggling a bit too much while conversating. I started to fear that there was evil afoot.

It wasn't until I got up from my dining seat to pour myself some water at the soda fountain that I started to notice weird stares and raised eyebrows from people. In fact, a fellow brave peer asked me what the funny face was about. I knew I was funny-looking, but calling it out in public meant there were grounds for further investigation of such a remark. I asked the peer what he meant, and unbeknownst to me, I'd been walking around town as a different ethnicity for about two hours. I was two purple eye stripes and a red squeaky ball away from being Pennywise, and even he might be more benevolent than white-cast sunscreen.

That day marked the beginning of a disdain for white-cast sunscreen and a newfound knowledge of the existence of friends who don't tell you when you have a booger in your nose, an open backpack while walking, or a white face on a non-white man. And as aforementioned, I realized why lifeguards have white noses in the media.

Because that sunscreen was expensive, I ended up being a clown for the rest of the summer. But today, I use mineral sunscreen. No cast.