The Neatest Summer Shade Solution Arrives In France

Today the leisure crowd increasing uses the sun to attain the healthy glow that comes from being outside. It is ironic that we now seek to darken our skins to attain beauty, while only a few generations ago that same darkened tone was shunned by the aristocratic among us. At that time, the darkening of the skin from the sunlight was tantamount to announcing that one makes a living working outside, performing manual labor. This farmers tan was taken as a sign of lower economic status.

Times have changed to the extent that even those who achieve their healthy tan from farming no longer have the attached stigma of performing some lesser value to society. The health drive in this country has driven us back to the realization that without the farming industry, the country would be in dire straits indeed. It is with a certain irony that the tanning industry has become a mammoth capitalist enterprise, as masses of Americans spend gleefully on products which even allow tanning at night.

Certain areas of the country benefit disproportionately to this sometimes fanatical drive to be outdoors. Those areas that experience sunshine most of the year, and especially those that have bodies of water as well are swamped with visitors eager to play in the sand and surf under sunny skies. A phenomenon of amazing proportion has sprung up around the spring breaks college students take advantage of. It seems nearly a requirement to take off from college in the spring and amass in places like Florida and California for some wild and crazy fun and release during the spring. This event has its down sides of course, but that has not slowed the event at all.

Exposure to the sun can be beneficial to our health. Most famously, the skin has the ability to produce vitamin D in significant quantities from exposure to sunlight. The often overlooked aspect of that health benefit is that it only requires 20 to 30 minutes of exposure for the body to work its magic. After that, one is entering the realm of exposure without health benefit. It is rarer for us to plan an activity in the sun, much less our spring break, which only lasts for 20 to 30 minutes. If we are going to the beach, we plan on staying there for a long period of time, perhaps even the whole day.

The shift from considering a tan and exposure to the sun something to be eschewed to the notion of the tan as a sign of a healthy active outdoors person has brought some health issues with it. We know that exposure to the sun has a negative effect on the skin. Even a few minutes of unprotected exposure to the sun on a daily basis can cause a phenomenon known as photo aging. This results in the appearance of freckles and age spots and causes the skin to appear rough and leathery, the opposite effect the youngster was shooting for while lying in the sun for a tan.

But the king of all the problems with unprotected exposure to the sun is skin cancer. While the majority of skin cancers are treatable forms of basal cell carcinoma, the treatment is at best unpleasant. This has spawned yet another industry in the form of UV resistant skin care products. For those for whom the call of the sun is unavoidable, these skin care products with sun prevention factors of varying strengths have provided a means to stay safely in the sun.

We have a vast array of creams, oils, and ointments we can apply to protect us from UV rays, but they all seem to have the same drawback. There is just something inherently icky about applying oil to the skin before going to the beach. In addition to the discomfort of feeling oiled up, blowing sand now sticks everywhere it touches. When we decide to cool off in the water, we wash off our protection, at best this means we have to re-oil ourselves, at worst we are once again in the sun without protection. It would be wonderful if public beaches all installed shade sails so the public could enjoy the sun in greater safety.

To find out more about sail shades as well as the tremendous advantages they can offer in UV protection, make sure you visit other valuable on-line resources. For the French marketplace one of the most helpful and educational sites is named Voile d’Ombrage, which is among the words and phrases the french make use of to describe sail shades.