Home and free and sister-less for the whole evening. Joy!

There was a woman in Sofia's today who had such a dark tan that I would have thought she was black except for her facial structure. Her boyfriend was lighter, but they both looked like they'd been cooking a little too long. I almost couldn't take my eyes off of her, I was so disgusted. It made me wonder if she just didn't know that she was causing possibly irreparable damage to her skin, or just didn't care? As we learned in bio, one of the ways a cancer starts is when a mutagen alters a certain kind of gene in a cell, an oncogene. Cancers don't just pop up from mutations in any gene; it has to be a gene that controls cell division or cell death. Once the mutagen hits an oncogene, it can become the proto-oncogene of a cancer, dividing at an incredibly swift rate with nothing to halt it. UV light is a mutagen; it changes the DNA in your skin cells. If the DNA in a cell is injured, there are little mechanisms that go and try to repair it. If it can't be repaired, the p53 gene is activated--the cell suicide gene--and the cell is instructed to self-destruct, and you wind up with a sunburn. But if the altered gene just happens to be p53, or a gene that tells cells to stop dividing, then you're in some serious trouble. It's like taking away the brake from your car. The cell will divide continuously and won't self-destruct, forming the mass of cells known as a tumor. There are hundreds of mutagens, including cigarette smoke and asbestos. I just could not believe that anyone would willingly bake themselves in the sun without sunscreen if they have any understanding of what that UV light could be doing to their cells. That's so idiotic. I'd rather be pale year round than have melanoma when I'm thirty. I think the same thing of the girls at school who spend so much money on tanning salons during the winter and before prom. It's crazy! If you're so desperate to look brown, go spend five bucks on some self tanner at CVS. or roll in the mud. whatever.