Mad dogs and Englishmen...

Being a narcissistic lot, we all - well, many of us - are prepared to suffer to look what the vogue of the time terms as beautiful.

If looking like an undernourished waif is the fashion, the young, especially, females, usually, will literally make themselves sick - bulimia, for example - to look 'right'.

Our bodies, our hair, our skin and what we wear has to make a statement. i.e. "we are not nerds, we form part of the 'beautiful people'."

And it is the advertising gurus who dictate what is beautiful.

We women particularly do get taken in by much of the glamour we see in glossy magazines and on the telly, and regressively men are 'catching up'.

Whereas before men hid their vanity, not very succesfully I grant you, and certainly not in every era, not since the 18th century have they really come out of the closet and become quite open about wearing make-up, having facials and their hair coloured, etc.

Since the mid to late 20th century Mick Jagger has influenced the heterosexual man that he can be as camp as he likes as long as he beds women.

We have come a long way since the only advertising directed at men was Brylcreem, conservatively tailored suits and that funny one where a weed on the beach gets overshadowed by the 'incredible hulk'.

Now it is not so much the size of men's pectorals which interest the advertisers in the summer but the colour of their skin. And there is a plethora of products to 'help' you get that coveted suntan and, let's face it, you cannot get a 'sun' tan working out at the gym.

And that is the catch. So called sun 'protective' creams while you tan have mushroomed, and each label fiercely competes with its rivals to ensure its product sells the most.

"Black is beautiful" (read brown, really, as few self-respecting Maltese want to be seen as 'black'; we have a long way to go in defeating racism) has been around for so long that it is really quite surprising that white skin has not come back into fashion, well except for, perversely, Michael Jackson.

It is quite sad, really; he must have gone through quite a bit of pain to make such drastic changes to his skin colour and his features, yet those born with white skin are happy to fry in the sun to change their pigmentation.

A suntan is merely a sign of UV damage and represents the skin's attempt to minimise further harm. But the advertisers don't tell us that. And young parents are still thinking that suntanned children look healthy and beautiful, not yet appreciating the serious danger posed to children by the sun.

People with negroid hair went to a lot of trouble to straighten their hair before that kind of hairstyle became fashionable, then perms were all the rage for a while.

Of course black people in the music and entertainment industry in general had a valid reason for wanting to look 'less black' in the Fifties, but after the Sixties and Jimi Hendrix and to a lesser degree Marsha Hunt, it all changed.

For younger readers' information, Ms Hunt was one of the stars of Hair, a hippy musical which was a big hit at the time, not least because the cast all appeared naked on the West End stage for the first time. She also had a much publicised affair with Mick Jagger, which, if I remember correctly, resulted in a love child.

But have things changed? Maybe Michael Jackson is trying to tell us something!

The advertisers are definitely trying to tell us that it is alright to stay in the sun as long as you cream yourself with their product. Nivea have an advert on television showing a child being 'fashionably body painted' with sun protection cream so that he can round around on a sun- parched beach.

There is no health advice warning, as issued by health authorities, that it is unwise to be in the sun between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

"There is a strong link between episodes of sunburn in childhood and the subsequent development of melanoma. It is estimated that due to the fact that children tend to spend more time outdoors, about 80 per cent of their lifetime, sun exposure is generally incurred before the age of 18.

"The cancer-inducing damage to the genes in the skin sustained with each episode of sunburn is irreversible. As a consequence, this cumulative damage translates into skin cancer decades later," say the skin specialists.

Bringing back the old adage that only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun," is not such a bad idea, except being partial to the latter, men, not the sun; we should just stick to the mad dogs.

The single most important cause of melanoma is exposure to the ultraviolet rays of the sun, especially episodes of sunburn. Besides melanoma, the sun induces other forms of skin cancer, which though not usually fatal, often produce significant disfigurement.

The sun's ultraviolet rays also cause premature aging of the skin in the form of wrinkles, blemishes, coarseness, broken veins, and scaly patches, say the experts.

Apart from the ozone layer depletion, people's behaviour in the sun has been the main cause for the rise in skin cancer rates in recent decades.

An increase in popular outdoor activities and changed sunbathing habits have led to excessive UV exposure.

In the Maltese Islands, a total of 135 cases of melanoma were diagnosed in the last five years, between 1998-2002, with 27 deaths being reported from melanoma during the same period, translating into an overall 21.5 per cent mortality rate.

This means that over one in five persons with melanoma in the Maltese Islands are being diagnosed too late, says a prominant dermatologist.

Yet, the public is getting conflicting messages from billboards and adverts on buses and television. One billboard with the sun depicted as a horned devil and the skeletal remains of a sunbather on the beach is hilariously macabre.

Talk about over the top, it reminds me of a cartoon where a 'healthy' pig in sunglasses and using sunblock berates her companion, a fried bacon rasher for not using UV protection.

On the other hand "safe and cool in the sun", which is what another billboard tells us if we use their cream, could result in the brand being hauled up to answer charges of a trades description nature.

One can neither be "cool" or "safe", no matter how much sunblock is plastered on while cooking in the sun.

Mad drivers

I have often referred to the fact that many Maltese drivers must have more than one guardian angel watching over them. The driving here has always been bad, but it is getting worse day by day.

We can see that even extra guardian angels are not coping from the amount of seriously injured people arriving in hospital day in day out, some not even making it to hospital.

We need a serious campaign on safe driving, the sooner the better. Heavy and large vehicles, including bowsers watering centre strips and works department lorries waiting for government employees working on busy roads, should not be allowed to stop, causing unnecessary hazards.

No one seems to have a clue on road safety. It is not the first time I have mentioned that whereas drivers did not overtake in tunnels until recently, they are now getting cheekier and cheekier weaving in and out all the way through.

But a driver in the Regional Road tunnel leading to the turn off to the blocked Mrabat Street (by the way how long is it going to take to clear that thoroughfare?) and on to Msida really stunned me last Thursday.

Having just got on the road from St Julian's I stayed in the inner lane. About half-way through the tunnel a black car swerved in front of me forcing me to brake hard; my immediate reaction was to sound my horn and flash my lights.

Wrong move. How dare I show such intolerance? To show his displeasure at my cheek the driver just stopped dead in front of me for about 30 seconds. I thanked my lucky stars there was no traffic behind me, otherwise I would have ended up like a tinned sardine and I would just be another statistic.