Hot or Not Beauty

I know that this topic has been addressed more often than not, however after what I have seen quite recently, I felt that this particular topic is not addressed often enough. Although magazines, television and doctors keep warning us of the damages caused by sun exposure, many of us think that’s overrated or just plain exaggeration. After what I saw this weekend, I was reminded that it isn’t.

This past weekend, while I was doing makeup for a client I realized that her skin was completely damaged from continuous sun exposure added with the non-existent daily facial regimen of cleansing and moisturizing turned this 35 year old woman’s skin into the skin of late 50s woman. Some of the damage is irreversible and it saddened me that there wasn’t much I could do. I applied makeup and improved a lot but to mask her skin’s bad texture she couldn’t wear dewy sheer foundation like she preferred and we had to resort to a full-coverage foundation.

She works at a school and spends most of her time outdoors with absolutely no protection whatsoever, so in 4 years, she aged 5 times due to not caring about her skin.

Daily protection from the damage of the sun’s rays is not optional, it’s a must to preserve your skin against the harmful action of UVB and UVA, the former directly responsible for causing sunburns and the latter responsible for more long-term damage to the skin.

Sunscreens should be applied all year round and not only when it’s sunny, even through a cloudy sky the sun manages to work its damage on our faces and skin and there are multiple options on what type of formulation to use.

I prefer physical sunscreens (titanium dioxide per example) to chemical sunscreens (oxybenzone) because I have very sensitive skin and usually have allergic reactions to products with oxybenzone. The problem with titanium dioxide is that it reflects light so when it’s present on foundations it will reflect flash light and people will appear washed out on pictures, but this shouldn’t be a problem in our daily lives unless we’re photographed for a living.

Sunscreens are present in makeup primers, moisturizers, foundations and powders so you can enjoy the added protection without having to worry to add YET another product to your beauty routine, so there is no excuse for not wearing adequate sun protection. Usually moisturizers go up to SPF10 and Foundations go up to SPF25.

I prefer daily moisturizers without SPF and will have the protection in either my tinted moisturizer or put on Clinique’s Super City Block SPF25 (oil-free) and reapply every two hours if I’m under continued sun exposure, although it’s recommend to reapply every two hours to insure continued protection.

So, don’t forget sunscreen, you’ll thank yourself in the future.