Sun bathing can cause skin cancer. But do we care?

The Observer, July 2004

It started with looking at the tanned girls in magazines. Or it started in Skegness. Or it began when she was in Greece for a fortnight when she was 16. For Rachel Solway, who is now 30, it really started four years ago when her boyfriend noticed an unfamiliar mark on her toe. It was a small thing, about 2.5mm round, and it wasn't itching or bleeding or asymmetrical like they warn you about, but it had turned a little darker than when she had first seen it a year before. Her doctor said, 'I wouldn't worry about it, but do you want to go to see a specialist?'
Solway works as a human resource manager for Shell in London. She has blue eyes and light brown hair, the sort of complexion that demands a sunscreen with a protection factor of 15 or above, but social trends may demand a little less. As she says: 'Everything looks so much better when you're tanned. You feel so much healthier. There's nothing like coming back to Britain in early September with a late-summer tan and walking into college or work and everyone going, "My God, you look fantastic!"'
She began to take holidays abroad in her mid-teens, first to Greece, then Spain and the Canary Islands. She found that she tanned easily and well, and her regime didn't change much from country to country. 'I'm a good size 10/12,' she says, 'and you don't want to take everything off in the UK, but you'll take it off when you're abroad. I did use suntan lotion. I'd start on 15, and in the last few days I used to call it going for the burn. I would put on Hawaiian Tropic Factor 4, and lie in the sun for eight hours a day and go brown. Now and again I'd burn. Maybe one day on each holiday I'd burn one part of me because I'd missed a bit - a shoulder or a leg - not blisters, or to the point where I'd require any type of medical assistance. I'd just go red and I'd get in the shower and it would sting.' Solway had always had a number of moles on her back and arms, and in 1999 she first noticed that mark on her toe. The first specialist thought it looked fine, but when her boyfriend remarked that it 'looked disgusting' a year later, she called to see him again. He was on holiday. His secretary gave her the number of someone else.

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