Why SPF 30 is High Enough for a Snowman

Anything over SPF 30 is wasting your time. And that's coming from someone so pale, my skin is essentially transparent.

Tan is not an option. I'm either polar bear chic or completely miserable

Here's the thing, SPF literally measures how long it takes you to burn. A sunscreen with SPF 2 allows you to stay out in the sun twice as long without getting burned than you would wearing nothing. SPF 5 takes five times as long.

So if it takes me 15 minutes to burn (which even for me, would be a feat) SPF 15 has me covered for almost 4 hours.

BUT...if you've perspired or swam after putting on sunscreen (e.g. anyone wearing sunscreen), you're supposed to reapply every 80 minutes anyway. Not because the sunscreen has lost its effectiveness, but because there's no longer sunscreen on parts of your skin.

I know you're thinking that still doesn't matter, a higher SPF rating means more UV rays are being blocked for the time the sunscreen is on your skin.  And you're kinda right, but you're also wrong.

Here's my hand as it looks in the visible spectrum on the left and a visualization of what my hand looks like to UV rays on the right

Sunscreen blocks a portion of UV rays depending on the SPF. By SPF 15, the UV rays had to start labeling landmarks.

Fun Fact: melanin can provide skin with the equivalent of up to SPF 13 which is why the prevalence of skin cancer is much lower in people of color. However, skin cancer can happen to anyone so sunscreen is always a good idea.

Unfortunately, there's no federal regulation regarding labeling for UVA protection. Look for "Broad-spectrum" on the bottle and ingredients that ends with "-benzone" on the back. Or you could go with sunblocks that contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide which protect you from essentially everything but dirty looks.

The moral of the story is that the difference between picking SPF 50 over SPF 30 is less significant than how well you rub your sunscreen in. And SPF 30 is easier to find, cheaper, and often less oily and obnoxious to apply.

So as for me and my freckley Viking-married-a-leprachaun skin, I'll take the SPF 30.

Enjoy the Sun,
Stephanie

13+ Reasons Being Dutch Rocks

Hey Steph,

I've recently figured out something about myself: my favorite hobby is being with people; and this hobby has created a lot of other hobbies. My freshmen year of college my roommate loved football, so I went to every home football game that season, and I loved football too. A similar experience happened two years later but swap out the roommate and the sport--this time it was basketball.
And it's not just sports. I've loved local bands, pranking, throwing parties, Spanish music, and hiking all because my friends liked these things. The best part is I don't just pretend to like these things because it is what my friends want to do; I actually, truly, independently love them (at least for a season).

My most recent love occurred two weekends ago when I spent some time with our awesome kid brother. I picked him up from the airport clad in my orange Netherlands jacket (he wore his Netherlands jersey), and we headed straight to a sports grill to watch the Spain versus the Netherlands World Cup soccer match. After that 5-1 clobbering of Spain, yes, I became a lover of soccer, or football as the rest of the world calls it. And I also had a fact reaffirmed to my mind: being Dutch is the best thing ever. Here's a few reasons why our ancestral heritage rocks.

Source

Without the Dutch, the world would have 3 billion tulips fewer every year.

Without the Dutch, we wouldn't have names for Brooklyn, Harlem, Coney Island, and Flushing (in Queens). (Heck, even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why'd they changed it, I can't say. People just liked it better that way.) Without the Dutch, New Zealand, Mauritius, Easter Island, and Tasmania would have different names. Americans wouldn't be called Yankees. We wouldn't trek across the plains. We couldn't pull the trigger. There'd be no Wiggles (and maybe that's a good thing). We couldn't have a hankering for a thing called a pickle or a gherkin (though who would want to eat that, anyway?) We wouldn't have luck, and we couldn't geek out about anything. It's a sad linguistic life without the Dutch.

Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret and Furred Mantel 1634

Without the Dutch, we'd lose some of the greatest masters of art. Without the Dutch, there'd be no Rembrandt.

The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

Without the Dutch, Vermeer's masterful light would have been kept in the dark.

The Starry Night, June 1889,The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Without the Dutch, a starry, starry night would have remained unseen.

Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

Without the Dutch, Mondriaan's iconic work in primary colors would have never met the canvas nor Yves Saint Laurent's Fall 1965 collection.

M.C. Escher, Relativity, 1953

Without the Dutch, a lizard would remain a lizard and the world would be right-side up.

Henry Baker, Van Leeuwenhoek's Microscopes

Without the Dutch, we'd lose the Father of Microbiology, Python computer programming language,  and van der Waals forces (or at least a name for them). Without the Dutch, there would be no Fokker airplanes, Philips tvs, and Shell gas stations.

Without the Dutch, we'd lose the wisdom of Erasmus.

Anne Frank

Without the Dutch, there would have been no secret annex--and the inspiring girl hidden there.

Hiding Place in Corrie ten Boom's House

Without the Dutch, one of the most courageous, faith-filled woman the world has ever known would have never existed.

Look up William the Silent to find out why Ireland is connected to the Netherlands. (Source)

Without the Dutch, the Irish flag would be missing its orange.

And without the Dutch, the world would have never witnessed the magnificence of this:

Hup, Holland, Hup!

Amanda

The LDS Church: Homogenized Milk?

Dear Amanda,

When I was younger I used to wonder what God’s favorite color was. Or His favorite subject in school, or if He was an introvert. I used to wonder if angels had the same opinions as God did---if all heavenly beings had the same favorite flavor of ice cream, or had the same taste in books.

I used to wonder if perfection implied a single type of person.

via Seth Oliver Photography

I realized  later that that clearly wasn’t true. God approved of Moses and Enoch who were shy, and James and John who were loud. There wasn’t a “more perfect” personality type. While I believe that God appreciates the beauty of all tones and hues, He could still be God and have a favorite. And that Jesus could very well prefer yellow while God the Father loves green. There is no theological problem with individuality. Our individuality is older than creation itself.

I later wondered how different we could be from each other and still live in heaven? My older, more widely-read self, defaulted to completely different. That heaven could contain all kinds and types of person, that God could make a place for everyone. But that is as obviously flawed as assuming we’ll all be the same.

We won’t waltz around heaven with our tempers and cynicism still in tact, even if those traits are strong components of our thought processes now. I can only assume that my extroversion will remain, but my glory-seeking certainly won’t be tolerated. There won't be testy or hasty souls in heaven, not because either is "bad" but they certainly aren't good traits, not in the way that God is good.

Jesus isn’t a moral relativist. There are wrong answers on this test, even if there are multiple correct responses. Jesus could love chemistry or rose-gardening or Baroque music, but He can't love Grand Theft Auto. There's a lot of things it's off limits to love, but there's a lot that remains.

So what’s the answer? How different will we be in heaven? And if we’re aiming for heaven, how homogenous/heterogenous should the Church be?

That’s the fun-sucking question of the past week. But contrary to the opinion of seemingly the entire internet, we’re not deciding between anything-goes and complete uniformity. There are more than two options. There is  place for disagreement, for dissenting opinion, for critique, for advice. There is a range of places to put your feet in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and you certainly don’t have to follow in anyone's exact footsteps . . . but the gate is still small and the path is narrow.

Hopefully, not this narrow---Mount Huashan

And he commanded them that they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught, and which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets. Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people. (Mosiah 18:19-20)

Friends, I've always had questions. My entire Mormon life has been defined by difficult questions and uncomfortable silences. There are things I wish were different. The human element of the LDS Church really doesn't have all the answers. The mind of God is unknowable on so many things I wish I knew the whys of, but it never changes the answers I do have. I still don't know, I believe.

Love and hugs in all the directions,

Stephanie

Why are we so Conflicted about Feminity in the Modern Age

Hey Amanda,

This  post is a response to Art of Manliness's Why are we so Conflicted About Manhood in the Modern Age?  

So here's the thing about using "historical" as an adjective, it means nothing unless you know something about the past. When people throw out the phrase "Historical gender roles," they are usually decently accurate about what men did, being loosely "fight and farm." For whatever reason, people define women's historical role as what women did in the 3-4 decade window around 1950. This looks very little like what women had been doing for the several preceding millennia.

It's a little window into the male-centric telling of history when we wave our hands around and say "and the women raised babies." As if what was involved in running a household was a trivial addendum to daycare. This is doubly funny to me when people replace "Historical" with "Biblical" gender roles, and my first response is "Have you read the bible? It's filled with women that can't have babies."

Ah yes, a virtuous woman is "worth far more than rubies," but let's finish reading Proverbs 31. The dream wife also buys land, earns money , plants vineyards (all v 16), has muscular arms (v. 17), provides for the needy (v. 20), and speaks her well-educated mind (v. 26). And, she gets recognized for the things she's made (v. 31).  There's only one mention of children in the whole 21-verse section.

So when were these golden days when "men were men, and women were women?" I had a great-grandfather that raised cattle in the American frontier. Once while William was in the pasture, a man came into his house, murdered his child and assaulted his wife.  William tracked the killer down,  and "after beating the man until [he] was nearly exhausted and felt the murderer could not live," William rode into town to give himself over to the US Marshall. (The Marshall told him he had done the right thing and to go home.)

William Butler had a super macho beard

With that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and say William was about as traditionally masculine as you can get. So what was his wife like? Well, Emma taught her kids how to add, subtract, read and write. She nursed sick family members with herbs and teas, the only medical care available to them. She cooked three meals a day on a wood-burning stove, and  built its fire herself. Emma washed all the clothes by hand. She preserved enough food to get her entire family through the winter. She butchered and dressed the chickens. She grew the only vegetables her family ate in her extensive kitchen garden.

Emma, paragon of feminity

Emma also gave birth to ten children, six of whom made it to adulthood. So she did all of the above with a toddler tugging on her skirts, and she never put on Sesame Street to get it done.

Now, I do have a pretty remarkable family, but I'm pretty sure Emma didn't have magical powers....I think. We can only assume that she did very little of what we consider childcare--- Children of the period (and essentially every period since the beginning of time) were expected to keep themselves entertained and out of trouble. No one had the option to helicopter parent. There just wasn't time.

If your opinion of a woman's role is "up until recently they did what I pay my nanny minimum wage to do," you can't have a very high opinion of the influence of femininity in human history.* If we have an abundance of entitled manchildren because we forgot what it meant to be a man, perhaps we have an abundance of poorly educated, malnourished adults because we forgot there was anything to remember about being a woman. On average homeschooled kids score better than 87 percent of American kids. And you are healthier if your food is homecooked, period.

Traditional Women's Work

Am I saying everyone should homeschool their kids? Of course not.  Am I saying women should cook every meal? Heck no. What I'm saying is that  feminism shouldn't strive to drive women out of the kitchen as if the kitchen was a degrading and demeaning place to be. If we've been taught that women's work was degrading and demeaning, well, it was probably a man that taught us to think that way.

To be continued,
Stephanie

*I'm certainly not saying childcare is trivial or unimportant. I'm just saying societally, we have never valued childcare as an end unto itself.  There's a difference between keeping a toddler safe and reasonably happy for a period of time and teaching that child directly or indirectly how to function in the world. IKEA will do the first at no cost; it takes conscientious effort to do the second.

Completing My 26-Mile Thesis

Hey Steph,

Remember that one time that you shared a blog with your sister? Yeah, that was really cool. It's nice having an online missive conversation with another person instead of retaining a one-ended conversation the way you have for the last several weeks. Well, guess what? I'm back!

Yes, the terrible monster who shall not be named, but I like to call "my thesis, urgh," has relinquished its control of me. I am safe and have arisen from this hard-fought battle of long hours, tired typing fingers, and pillow screams of anger as a . . . MASTER.

What's that?

Oh, you've been dying to call me Master Amanda? Oh, go right ahead.

Ok, really, you don't need to ever call me that. But I would like to take this one self-indulgent post to plant a landmark in time, and like pretty much everything else I let swirl around my head, the following thoughts have general application.

Steph, I started this journey to complete my master's four years ago. And when I began, I saw it as taking several classes and writing a long paper at the end. The paper was secondary in my mind at the time. Little did I know the weight of that paper on my shoulders, day in, day out, month after month, year after year. (Does the phrase "little did I know" remind you of the movie Stranger than Fiction, also?)

At some point, after I'd actualized just how hard this puppy was going to be, I pulled up the first 40 pages of my thesis and realized: "None of this matters. None of it. No one cares what I am writing."

It was a pretty low point. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that if I quit, I'd regret it the rest of my life.

Then I realized that maybe I was under false pretenses that the information I collected in my thesis mattered. Maybe I was just running a marathon. To the outside world, it really doesn't matter that an individual runs a marathon. I mean, do we celebrate when someone traverses 26 miles in a car? Not really. There's nothing important in the actual coverage of 26 miles on foot. But we still respect people that have run the marathon. Why?

Courtesy Sangudo

Well, marathons are hard.

See, we're not impressed by the fact that they moved their body from point A to point B. We're impressed that they diligently trained to be able to run a little further day after day. We're impressed that even with all that training, they fought the temptation during the race to give up and finished the marathon anyway. We're impressed at their strength and their persistence and their emotional and physical stamina.

So maybe writing a thesis is more about the diligence and the persistence and the problem-solving that occurs within the confines of a single brain because no one else understands the problem in the intimate way you understand the problem. Maybe it is about doing something hard and mostly alone.

I guess this is the pep talk I would have given myself in those moments of exhaustion and nihilism. And maybe it's the pep talk I'd give to anyone in the middle of accomplishing a hard journey:
You're going to feel small. You're going to feel inadequate. You're going to feel weak or dumb or a faker among experts. But maybe that's the point: Imagine the feeling of completing this journey when you felt that way the majority of the time.

I've felt it. It feels pretty great.

master's degree: a certification that an individual knows more than anyone else on the planet about something nobody cares about

Cheers,

Amanda, M.A.

P.S. I promise to never mention my thesis again--ever. :)

Thin is Overrated.

Hey Amanda,

So you and I both know that American eating habits are iffy. Thinness, however, is irrelevant to nutrition. The Obesity Epidemic news report cliche of watching fat people walk around with their heads out of the frame is really unacceptable. They are human beings with families and aspirations and struggles. I hate the mindset that those video montages display. It’s still not acceptable to judge someone's values and worth based on their bodies. 

Obesity Epidemic: n. A public health concern that is often used to justify fat-shaming. Similar to the phenomena of “Bless her heart,” one may invoke “For their health” before an insult to mask disgust, or otherwise ignore the moral imperative to treat everyone with human dignity.  

All things being equal, if you're not at a healthy weight being overweight is actually healthier than being underweight. Let’s stop high-fiveing celebrity anorexia in the name of “getting healthy” when you really just mean getting skinny. Thin does not equal healthy.

Let’s Meet Some Olympians

Sarah Robles

Meet Sarah Robles. She's an Olympic weightlifter, and the strongest woman in America.

Reese Hoffa

Reese Hoffa, Bronze medalist in Shot Put at the London Games. Hoffa is one of the most consistently awesome shot-putters in history, making more than a hundred "over 21 meter" throws in competition. He can also solve a Rubik's Cube in under 30 seconds. This is completely unrelated to his physical fitness, but it's awesome, so worth mentioning.

Are these olympians thin? No. 

Are they fit?

Um, Robles can lift a quarter of a ton and hold it over her head. Hoffa  launched 16 lbs of metal more than 70 feet with his bare hands at the Olympics.  You'd have a hard time coming up with a definition of fitness that excluded them.

That is if you've ever stopped to think about the definition of fitness. Fit, contrary to popular belief, is not a synonym for sexy.

Sex appeal is a really bad yardstick for health. BMI is a bad yardstick. Blood sugar levels are approaching an acceptable measure. At least they are more accurate on an individual basis and more relevant to what actually kills people--diabetes--the 7th leading cause of death in the US.

The moral of the story is you can't tell if someone is healthy by looking at them. Bigots gauge work ethic or self control by skin color, eye shape, or pant size---you shouldn't.  

As a total non-athlete, I freely endorse the idea that we undervalue our bodies when all we do is sit, walk, or sleep. It's unhealthy, but it's not "Eww, really? Gross." Recently, I've gotten really dedicated to pseudo-pilates and I've literally realized I had muscles in places I didn't know about. I can even do one of these now:

via Be Fit Physical Therapy & Pilates Ltd.

I'm not any smaller, really. That wasn't the point. I'm just a whole lot fitter. And if you're currently ignoring all the remarkable physical feats your body can do, well, I invite you to take strides towards becoming a fitter you. 

But remember, 

No compliment sounds as good 

as accomplishment feels.

If you need motivation, always, always, always choose competence over vanity,
Steph

Anyone else have problems internalizing the difference between fit and thin, 

even when you know better?

 It's hard to notice the water you swim in.