Cate Blanchett … it’s not just about sunscreen anymore.
With the fair skin of stars like Cate Blanchett offering an alternative to the great Aussie tan, Alyssa McDonald asks if the bronze age is over.

What do the words “Cate Blanchett” say to you? “Queen Elizabeth I”, maybe? or “giant elf”, perhaps?

“Luminous beauty” and “flawless complexion” are the sort of phrases journalists often jump on – cringe-making ones, too, although when I meet Blanchett in Beijing, halfway through her knackering meet-the-press schedule, they do seem pretty apt. so what other phrases spring to mind? How about “truckie’s arm”?

Appearances might suggest otherwise, but the milky-skinned actor is not immune to the sun’s rays. “You get that truckie’s arm, driving around in summer, no matter how much sunscreen you put on. It’s indirect exposure,” she shrugs. “It’s not just about sunscreen any more.”

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If Blanchett’s driving tan has kicked in by the time we meet, it isn’t especially obvious. But she’s right, of course]
Sadly, there’s nothing healthy about a tan. if your skin has changed colour in the sun, the likelihood is that you have damaged its DNA. that damage isn’t reversed when your tan fades, and it can increase your risk of skin cancer – a condition that affects more than 400,000 Australians a year and kills 1800 of them.

Australians from northern European stock, whose skins are better suited to clouds and drizzle than Australian summers, are at the greatest risk by far. But whatever your skin colour, sun exposure makes you look old and leathery – not qualities that conjure up healthy sexiness.

It’s not as if the sun’s negative effects are a secret, but nothing seems quite enough to put us off. not the cold, hard statistics, not the graphic government campaigns, not even the rise of the pale beauty icon – now available in a variety of flavours, from Blanchett’s ethereal elegance to Anne Hathaway’s wholesome cuteness to the fabulous sluttiness of Dita Von Teese. so why, when the Slip-Slop-Slap campaign is just months shy of its 30th birthday, are we still following the sun, not to mention enhancing its effects with fake tans, solarium sessions and even injectable, colour-enhancing drugs?

Vanity is the simple answer. But there are other factors, too. Melanomas are now so common among white Australians – and survival rates, at more than 90 per cent, are so high – that we tend to think of them as less serious than, say, a lump in the breast.

“I was quite shocked when they wanted to take out the lymph node [as well as the tumour],” says Ellen, 29, who was 26 when a cancerous mole was identified on her back. “They removed it to see if cancer cells came up in that, too.” She’s never been a sunbather and has rarely been burnt, so she never thought of herself as at high risk. But since the melanoma, she’s discovered other factors]
Now she’s struggling to pinpoint the amount of sun she can afford to get. “I feel like I need to know more about what these different UV levels mean. It’s very vague just saying ‘stay out of the sun between 11 and three’. what if I want to go for a run along the beach at seven in the morning – do I need to put sun cream on? do I need long-sleeved clothing? what about from five in the evening?”

Peer pressure is another frustration. Ellen finds herself repeatedly explaining why she wants to stay out of the sun – something people deem somehow “un-Australian”.

Being bronzed is no international beauty standard, after all. thanks to the alabaster skin that looked so regal on Elizabeth I and the Lord of the Rings’ Galadriel, Blanchett also plays the role of SK-II’s “global face”. In much of Asia, the brand’s primary market, the beauty ideal is a pale, translucent complexion]
Blanchett is a little evasive about the Japanese brand’s decision to use a blonde Australian spokesperson, but she is happy to admit that her beauty aesthetic is an unusual one among Caucasian women.

When she was first approached by SK-II nine years ago, she says, “they were amazed that I had been using the whitening products”. However, she points out that most Australians are not the sun-worshippers they once were. “If you go to Bondi now, the people who are out on the beach on a 40-degree day are usually Irish tourists. Australians are not out in the midday sun.”

It’s true that the mahogany tan of the 1960s and ’70s has faded into the background. But in today’s shades of honey brown and bottled orange, its long shadow is still visible. Improbably, the duo we can blame for the tanning craze are John Harvey Kellogg (that’s right, cornflakes were not his only concern) and Coco Chanel. When Kellogg developed the sunbed in 1891 as a remedy for gout and eczema, he also sparked the notion of the “healthy” tan. In the early 1920s, the look also became beautiful when Chanel stepped off a friend’s yacht in Cannes looking browner than had, until then, been considered chic. Transplanted to Australia, these values found their natural climatic match.

However, the American cereal specialist and the French designer have been slowly losing their grip on Australia’s aesthetic. It’s hard to quantify exactly how much impact public health campaigns have had, but a 2009 study by Deakin University reported that the SunSmart program had been “highly effective” in increasing Australia’s collective longevity.

But just as it took us decades to fall in love with the sun, it’s going to take time to get over the affair, argues Terry Slevin of Cancer Council Australia. The council has been collecting data on Australian attitudes to tanning for more than a decade, and Slevin is cautiously optimistic about the findings. “We can’t say that nobody wants a tan. But fewer people want a tan, and of those who do want a tan, fewer people want a really dark tan.” He’s even upbeat about Ellen’s frustration with simplistic sun-care advice]
Slevin is also encouraged that “the Nicole Kidmans or Cate Blanchetts of this world are recognised as beautiful women and role models, while protecting their natural skin colour”. For younger tanners, particularly, a shift in the beauty standard is more likely to have an impact than a public health campaign. “But it’s not 100 per cent success,” warns Slevin. “There is still the notion of the tanned bikini model, or the bronzed Aussie on the male side of the fence. It’s still strongly ingrained in a lot of people – ‘I’d feel better if I got a bit of a tan.’ “

Brigid, 29 and naturally fair, wouldn’t disagree.

“I definitely felt more attractive, healthier, with a tan when I was young,” she says. Ten years ago, you might have found her sunbaking with her sister, “basting ourselves like turkeys in coconut oil and laying in the backyard in the middle of summer, with an SPF4 ‘protecting’ us from the harsh Perth sun.”

Now she’s much more careful. But she admits, “I still feel better with a tan, and in the days leading up to a party or wedding I will religiously get to work on my fake-tanning schedule.” It’s not just her own skin Brigid prefers to be brown]
While mixed feelings like Brigid’s are increasingly common, some people, like Sam, 33, are more blasé about the issue]
“Once you’re loaded up on that, you only need a day in the sun and you look like you’ve been tanning for months,” he explains. He says a tan just makes him feel “better”, whether it’s from the sunshine or a sunbed. But he still believes “you can have too much of a tan”, and it’s not a look he’s especially attracted to in others]
Injecting yourself with an unlicensed drug bought off the internet that has been the subject of numerous government warnings would strike many people as the sort of activity no tan would be good enough to justify. But Bondi dermatologist Chris Kearney says the drug seems to help avert hives and rashes caused by the sun, and is “showing some promise in helping protect against sunburn”.

(A more surprising discovery is that Melanotan significantly increases libido.)

But Kearney is also quick to point out that he is not endorsing the product, and that it may still prove to be dangerous. In a melanoma, it’s the melanocytes that become cancerous, so “theoretically, anything which stimulates those could potentially increase the risk”. There’s also a false sense of security attached to a product that reduces sunburn, as people may be lulled into believing they can stay in the sun for longer. “But just because you’re not getting sunburnt doesn’t mean the sun’s not causing damage to the DNA in your skin.” It will be five or 10 years before the drug’s effect on cancer rates can be measured.

Most of us, however, probably don’t need to worry about Melanotan – there’s that big burning ball in the sky to think about first. We’re increasingly aware of the dangers of too much sun]
But while we might feel guilty about it, Australians’ pleasure in a “healthy glow” is yet to fade, while our climate makes it hard to avoid. Pale role models like Cate Blanchett are a reminder that beauty needn’t be bronzed, but it’s going to take a lot of Blanchetts to cancel out more than a century of sun worship.

The good news, however, is that while we continue to mistreat our own skin, we have become extremely careful about protecting our children. “A lot of the sun damage and skin problems we see later in life come from childhood sun,” Kearney explains. “So that’s a step in the right direction for sure.”

Blanchett, herself a mother of three, is well aware of the phenomenon. “You’re on the beach, and suddenly there’s this sea of children with Lycra hats and long shorts. It feels like some science-fiction film. The romance of the freedom of a beach holiday, you feel there’s something lost in that. But you can’t live in that longing, you just have to accept that.”