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The other day, we arranged to meet friends down at the beach. We said we’d get there early, so 10 am saw my happy family of four saunter down across the sand, towels in hand.
We quickly spotted our friends who had clearly arrived quite a bit earlier, having already built a mini village out of umbrellas, towels, deck chairs and tents.
My bikinied friend Kira, nestled comfortably in a lounger, glanced up from the paper she was reading as we arrived.
“At last, you’ve arrived,” she said. “Now that you’ve found us, you can go get your stuff.”
“What stuff? We have towels!” I answered happily. “What else could we need? This is the beach! Sand, sea and… cool, are those croissants? Is that today’s paper? Can I use that chair when you go for a swim?”
Kira shook her head at me sadly.
“I knew it… never invite white people to the beach,’ she muttered across to her husband.
“What a grossly unfair generalisation,’ I replied huffily, settling myself down on my wholly inadequate towel and trying to look fabulously comfortable. ‘You can’t make a cultural norm out of Andreas and I packing light. Anyway, not bringing the kitchen sink does not make us under-prepared. It makes us… free-spirited and nature-loving. It makes us…”
Kira handed me a tube of suntan lotion, and gestured meaningfully at my two pale blue half-German sons, who stood blinking happily in the sunlight.
“Ooh, thanks.” I mumbled. “Ah… got any spare hats?”
While I remain convinced that Kira was jumping to cultural conclusions a little too speedily, I must admit that there is still quite a lot of fun to poke at pink people on the beach.
My favourite foible is the way so many of us secretly believe that we know the exact amount of time our unsunscreened bodies can spend in the midday sun before we get burnt. And we are never, ever right.
‘Oh no,’ we say to our bemused friends. ‘I can’t put on lotion yet. I am trying to get a tan. If I put lotion on now, I’ll just stay this horrid iridescent white colour.’
‘But I can SEE that you are burning,’ Kira will shriek. ‘It is making my eyes water to look at you. For heaven’s sake, get under the umbrella. Use the cream! Something!’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I’ll answer smugly. ‘It’s not like I am a tourist! I have been white under the African sun my whole life. Trust me…just another five minutes.’
Yip. Five hours later… lobster red.
“Nice tan,’ Kira will say, poking me wonderingly on the arm, as we dismantle the tent village.
‘It’ll SETTLE,’ I’ll say though clenched teeth. ‘Just don’t TOUCH me. At all. Okay?’
My friend Motsweng is always tickled pink whenever I get sunburnt. He’ll sit for hours, staring at me in fascination.
‘But why?” He’ll keep asking, over and over again. “Even if it does settle into a tan, after days and days of pain… what’s the point? You are just going to go white again. And do you have any idea how silly you look? All lined up on towels on the beach, like it’s a giant baking tray? And that whole peeling thing? That’s really gross, dude.”
In my experience, what few understand is that when it comes to stupid beach behaviour, there are shades of white. White Africans think they can some how get away with it, while white Europeans know they can’t… but grit their teeth and go there anyway. Take Andreas. He has one of those European-coloured bodies that just radiate centuries and centuries of being fully clothed. In fur. When he is on the beach in naught but a pair of trunks… it just looks terribly, terribly wrong.
Our first morning on Copacabana beach in Rio, a bunch of locals next to us actually winced when he took off his t-shirt.
“You know, I think I could get a tan from the rays reflected off your chest,’ I said cheerfully snuggling up to him.
Very funny,’ answered Andreas dryily as he brushed ineffectually at the sand already collecting on his towel. He then turned his attention to the local who was proffering him a bottle of extra-strength block.
“No thanks,” he said testily. “I want to get a tan. I want to blend in. Do you think I LIKE frightening your children?” The local spoke rapidly in Portuguese before feigning what can only be described as death by boiling vat of oil. He then pointedly dropped the lotion on Dreas’s towel and retreated to observe us from a safer distance. (Away from the reflected heat, one must presume.)
‘Khuh,” snorted Dreas. “Look at them, shaking their heads in wonder. You’d think they think I don’t know what I am doing. Seven more minutes of this, and I’ll be bright red. This evening, I’ll be unable to let any fabric touch my skin. Then a day or two of avoiding the sun in agony, and our holiday can begin.’
See? It’s all in the shading. Whatever your colour, have fun in the sun this summer.
This article originally appeared in Fairlady magazine.
