How I Got My Dad to Wear Sunscreen

My father is the most melanin-deficient member of our family, as so happens when you are the only one of completely Eastern European stock, while the rest of your immediates are composed at least in part of East Asian heritage. He is also the most stubborn.

And so despite the fact that he is melanin-deficient and prone to skin cancer, a condition that has sent him to the doctor several times over the years, he absolutely refuses to wear sunscreen with any kind of regularity. This might be okay if he spent his retirement in a windowless man cave. But that's not the case. He mostly occupies himself with fixing things around the house, like for instance the porch screen door at 2:17pm—just as the sun reaches is zenith in the sky. Plus, summer is approaching, which means can catch him driving around in a convertible, completely unprotected from the ultraviolet fireball above.

Here's a typical domestic sunscreen routine:

“Hey, Dad, you should wear sunscreen when you’re outside,” I say. He gruffly answers that he’s never outside for long. My mother raises her eyebrows.

“But even if you’re out for a little bit, you should wear sunscreen,” I reply.

“It’s cloudy,” he says.

“The rays still come through the clouds, Dad,” I say.

“I don’t like how they feel,” he retorts and then leaves the room before I can argue further.

I wanted to remedy his decades-long aversion to cancer prevention, but I wasn't sure how. That is until I discovered Japanese sunscreens.

The Internet has, to be sure, plenty of terrible effects on society. But it has also brought the global marketplace to our doorsteps and with that Japanese sunscreens. While European and Asian drugstores are graced with greaseless, light-weight formulas, in America we have been stuck with basically medieval sunscreens. Everything you hate about sunscreens—their goopy texture and greasy lifespan—is practically enforced by an underfunded FDA, which hasn’t approved a new sunscreen ingredient since 2002. It’s as if the rest of the world were on the iPhone X of suncare and we were still over gushing over the addictiveness of the Blackberry.

The Japanese market in particular, which is tightly regulated by the Ministry of Health, has a great many safe, affordable, and non-gloopy choices, thanks to a skincare-obsessed population. There is the light lotion-like Nivea Japan Perfect Water Gel SPF33. And there is the near water-like Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence SPF 50 ($8), which we named the Absolute Best Sunscreen for Avoiding a Sunburn. I figured that if I could get my father to try one of these, it might change his mind.

“Hey Dad, if I get you a Japanese sunscreen, will you try it—it’s not sticky like American sunscreens,” I asked.

“No,” he said and went outside onto the deck. My mother rolled her eyes.

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“He’s impossible,” she said, with a kind of you-see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with look. In marriage, I suppose, you have to pick your battles. But not in daughterhood, so I continued to harass my father. Hey, dad, want to try this sunscreen? No. How about now? No. It’s sunny today. No. No. No. Until finally, I informed him that I had pitched a story about his wearing sunscreen and he would have to actually try wearing sunscreen lest I forfeit the story. He grimaced.

“Hey Dad, want to try sunscreen today,” I asked. “Hold on, let me get some.” But he had disappeared outside by the time I had returned sunscreen in hand.

It was apparent I would have to trap my father into wearing sunscreen. So, when we went on an errand together to the car repair shop, I brought along the Biore Watery Essence. “Dad, it’s weightless, here let me put it on,” I said, with him cornered in the car. He scrunched up his face and I dabbed it on. “See, how does it feel?” I asked after spreading it around. “Oh, like nothing,” he said. If only it were that easy.