Pride Skin

As a child, I was completely consumed by horses. I even wrote my own “horse book” in a spiral notebook, complete with magazine collages and short stories and poems about horses. You could say it was the beginning of a love affair with writing.


Now that I’m an adult, I still have a great fascination with horses. I often find myself entranced by them as Rudi and I take our daily walk by the horse pasture down the road. There’s just something about them that puts me under a spell. I read once that when a horse is injured and their skin is cut, the scar tissue that grows over that wound is known as “pride skin.” How wonderful it is to think that our scars, which we often find great shame in, should really evoke a sense of pride.

It’s nearly impossible to go through life without scars. Just face it—you’re going to fall, you’re going to injure yourself and it’s going to leave a mark. However painful or embarrassing they might be, you’ll always remember how your scars came to exist. Our scars have a story to tell and a memory to evoke, whether we like it or not. They’re never pretty and leave your body changed permanently, but they mean something.

For me, my scars exist as a constant reminder of what my future might look like if I’m not careful. Most of my scars are precautions of the slicing and dicing variety made by a dermatologist. Having a great tan became an almost-obsession not long ago, and now I’m paying the price with practically annual biopsies of moles and the possibility of melanoma. My arms, legs, back and neck are all kissed with scars—some more severe than others. They are all thanks to suspect moles on my now pale skin, reminding me how foolish it is to bathe in the sun.

Granted, I have a family history of freckle abundance and am practically the poster child for necessary sun etiquette: fair skin, freckle-prone, blonde hair and blue eyes. All a dermatologist has to do is glance my direction and then begin to rattle off the many reasons I need to stay out of the sun and slather 4786243 SPF on my body. I have a lot of freckles and I make the doctor earn that $15 co-pay each time I visit as they photograph and create extensive diagrams of my natural body art. I even have freckles in fun places, like on the palm of my right hand and the bottoms of my feet. In grade school, my best friend also had a freckle on her palm and we’d joke that we had maps on our hands and pretend to give directions to our homes using freckles as reference points. See, freckles can be fun!

It’s not that I don’t like my freckles—I just struggle with the concept of what they potentially mean for me. Are they landmines just waiting for me to step in the wrong spot or harmless, but sometimes obnoxious, dandelions growing in the yard? If I had a scar for every freckle on my body, I don’t think I’d have much skin left—and that is what I find scary.

I sometimes gaze admiringly at people who have great tans; they look fantastic. I can’t help but feel a pang of sadness, though. Do they realize what they’re doing to themselves? Will it hit them on some idle Thursday afternoon that life was bigger than having a fantastic tan? Or will they cry in regret 20 years from now in the mirror, lamenting their deep wrinkles and bad choices?

These things seem to come in waves, spinning in cycles as the year’s progress. Years ago, being pale was seen as a thing of great beauty and status. Those who were pale were wealthy; they spent their days indoors and in the shade as their tan counterparts slaved away in the fields. As time wore on, being tan became a thing of status—luxury, even. It was a sign of having the funds to take a lavish vacation, the spare time to lay in the sun or the wads of cash to visit a tanning salon. These days, our paranoid health-conscious world warns us of the dangers of sun exposure, creating bigger and better sunscreen to save us from impending doom. Our affinity for big hats and sunscreen has even led to a mass, nation-wide Vitamin D deficiency.

In the end, I realize that my beauty doesn’t come from tanned skin—it comes from being smart enough to know when to stop. Sometimes, we have to endure a little pain to get the message across. For now, I’ll slather on the Helioplex-infused 100 SPF and look to my scars for inspiration; now that’s something to be proud of.