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How Sunscreen Became the Hottest Marketing Strategy in Beauty.

Summer is coming. GOT style. Instead of cold ones walking the earth,

it’s burned ones. Let’s talk sunscreen and forget the Game of Thrones

reference (and all of season 7 while you're at it).

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​​​​Sunscreen has maintained a steady jog to the forefront of

beauty’s top products and features in 2023, as mentioned

in CNN’s article “What’s Driving Sunscreen’s Big Boom”

by Leah Asmelash. The discussion around age, especially

the premature signs of aging in women, is prolific across

social media, entertainment news, and medical news

coverage, with sunscreen being the #1 tool doctors recommend to protect against premature aging and skin cancer. According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States, affecting 1 in 27 men and 1 in 40 women in their lifetime. From 2012 to 2015, the annual average cost to the economy for skin cancer treatment in the U.S. alone was $8.9 billion.

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SPF Isn't a TikTok Filter

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University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine published a study in 2021; students from 6th through 12th grade were surveyed about their sunscreen use between 2007 and 2019. Overall, there was a 4% annual increase in sunscreen use among the group surveyed, but it also showed an astounding difference: girls were 92.7% more likely to use sunscreen than their male counterparts. What’s driving girls to use sunscreen at such a higher rate than boys? Perhaps it’s that girls are trained from an early age to believe their long-term value lies in their appearance and, ultimately, their youthful skin? Or maybe it’s that girls are dominating social media channels, where they’ve been given the ability to vanish every freckle, hide annoying scars, or wipe away their bad skin days with the click of a filter. Whatever the reason(s) may be, it’s undeniable that women are ahead of the curve when it comes to the self-critique (or rather self-deprecation) of their perceived attractiveness. I don’t think anyone could throw a stone and NOT hit a woman or girl who hasn't judged or degraded herself physically in one way or another at least once per day for her ENTIRE life. But I digress.....​

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Statista reported that 63% of all Americans use beauty products containing SPF on a daily basis.

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SPF and the Self-Care Craze

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Self-care has become a dominant mental health trend among Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha groups. We’re talking about the generations that spent their senior year in lockdown or endured simultaneous chaos and boredom attending remote school while everyone else was attempting their life-changing sourdough starter. The pandemic was a huge fast-forward button for young people currently aged 12 to 27. The world was their oyster—until it wasn’t. I think the best comparison for me, as a Millennial on the cusp of 40, would be 9/11—and that event was one day of horror and the aftermath still echoes across our country. These kids saw their worlds suddenly shrink in less than a year and maybe they were able to return to some normalcy within 18 months, depending on what state they called home. Some likely lost loved ones due to COVID-19 or from other health complications exacerbated by lockdowns. Now we're all trying to get back to normal as if it never happened. COVID OUT. SELF-CARE IN.

 

Self-care has become a necessity. Whereas I was raised to believe that going to the hair salon once a year or stripping down to my panties for a massage was a treat, for these kids it’s a mental health exercise. The term “self-care” was not part of my childhood vocabulary, but I wish it had been. On Statista, Dominique Petruzzi authored "Share of Millennials & Gen Z Serious About Their Skincare Routine" in the U.S. in 2021. Petruzzi's survey results showed 63% of Millennials take their skincare routine seriously compared to 57% of Gen Z consumers. With only a 6% difference between these groups, can one assume that Gen Z consumers have been better educated on

self-care? You betchya. At the very least, the

realities of childhood and conversations around

mental health have placed a spotlight on how

quickly things can go to shit.

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SPF and the Self-Care Craze

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​​​​Now let’s bring it full circle. Sunscreen’s dominance

in the beauty sector comes at a time when Gen Z

is just a hop, skip, and a jump from their 30th

birthdays. They’ve also forged viral complaints

that they are aging faster than earlier generations.

Additionally, Statista shows that in 2021, Gen Z

and Millennials were head to head with 41% and

40%, respectively, purchasing the most among all

beauty categories, compared to Gen X and Boomers tied at 31%. Looking at that another way—Gen Z and Millennials are, on average, 15 years apart but are virtually tied in their beauty  product purchasing habits.

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Marketing, Shmarketing. Sunscreen is a Must!​

 

Let's remind our future selves - growing old is not something to avoid but something to achieve. As a many have said before me, and with more prose—our value doesn’t lie in the suppleness of our décolletage. Self-love, the all powerful mother of self-care, is an incredible gift. If there's one gift to bestow upon the children in your life, it's to show that wearing sunscreen isn't just a thing we do on the beach.  Sunscreen is a daily reminder - I love my skin.

 

In short, use sunscreen, but don’t be too hard on yourself when the wrinkles do come.

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