Not your average sunscreen ad

Welcome to the August edition of the newsletter. I hope you’re savouring these last days of summer and managed to catch some sun - or maybe you were desperately trying to stay cool if your city got hit by one of this year’s brutal heatwaves. 

Earlier this month, I spent a few days in Granada in Spain, where temperatures were around 35°C (95°F) during the day, so fittingly the topic of today’s newsletter is sunscreen. (It’s also kind of related to last month’s post about swimwear - catch up here if you missed it.)

I only started wearing sunscreen as an adult because, like many Black people, I grew up thinking I didn’t need it. No one in my family used it and I never saw anyone that looked like me in a sunscreen ad. Getting sunburnt while on holiday in Portugal a few years ago was a reality check - before then, it had never really occurred to me that dark skin could burn. 

It’s a widespread misconception that melanin provides sufficient protection from the sun. In a 2020 survey by Consumer Reports, only 39 percent of African Americans said they ever used sunscreen, compared to 77 percent of Latinos and whites.

As Dujon Smith, founder of the inclusive sun care brand My Block Skin told me in a recent episode of Made For Us, what’s needed is better education and more inclusive formulations.

As he sees it, the sun care industry has traditionally overlooked people of colour and many sunscreens leave a not-so-subtle white cast on people with darker skin tones. His solution: a clear gel that looks the same on everyone. 

Although brands like Black Girl Sunscreen have highlighted the need for inclusivity in sun care, Smith says men of colour have often been absent from the conversation.

In this clip (which happens to be our most popular Instagram reel to date with over 15,000 views), he tells me how this insight inspired My Block Skin’s first ad campaign. 

Smith was also motivated to launch the brand after coming across a study on melanoma survival rates among men of colour.

The 2023 study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, found that men of colour have the lowest survival rates from the disease. The authors of the study noted that Black, Hispanic and Asian men are more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma at later stages when it’s harder to treat.

“We're not educated to go do our annual skin tests and checks. When we do then catch the skin cancer and melanoma late stage, it's often more deadly,” says Smith.

“I've just been on a mission to dispel the misconceptions and the myths to say that we do need [sun care] products…We just need to be prioritised by the industry to create formulations that work on our skin tones and skin types.”

You can find the full conversation with him here.

Spotted in Andalucia

While in Granada, it was great to see NaviLens codes being used across the city’s transport system. NaviLens, featured in season 2 of the podcast, is an inclusive QR code designed to make public transport, museums, supermarkets and packaging more accessible to blind and visually impaired people.

Barcelona was one of the first major cities to deploy the codes across its transport network and many other Spanish cities like Granada have followed, as well as London, New York and Melbourne. Look out for them in a city near you!

Thanks for your time today. I’d love to hear about your experience with sun care. Are you a sunscreen skeptic or do you use it religiously? Reply to this email to share your thoughts (I read every message.)

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