STRANGER THAN FICTION: SKIN-CARE WOES: IT'S BAD TO HATE THE SKIN YOU'RE IN

Never, ever tell me that you don't believe in wearing makeup.

Since blaming one's parents for all life's ills is so in vogue these days, I'd like to heap a little guilt on Mom and Dad for passing along their bad-complexion genes to me.

Why couldn't I have had the kind of parents who spent their formative years making Neutrogena commercials for a living? Why couldn't they have been the kind of teens who said, "Oh no, a lone pimple! And right before prom night!" instead of the kind who could volunteer their foreheads for a topographical study of the Appalachians?

It's because of them that I'm rounding the bend to my 29th birthday and still standing next to 13-year-olds in the skin care aisle. My face is so oily, Exxon wanted to sink wells on it.

Now it's summer, the worst season of the year for the complexion-challenged.

As an added bonus, the only foundation that matches my skin tone is called "Casper," so you can imagine how well I do on the beach. The other shade you can find me in is "Lobster."

Have you noticed this new holier-than-thou attitude pale people have toward sunburned people? Back in the good ol' days, if someone came back to work Monday morning with a burn we'd say, "Looks like you got some nice color over the weekend!" Then we'd light up our cigarettes, eat our medium-rare steaks and have unprotected relations.

But today we know that all of those things are dangerous. Walk in with a burn now and you get: "Oh my! Didn't you wear your sunscreen?"

I was actually forced to lie about my sunburn at a barbecue the other day. I walked in with my lobster-head and became the talk of the gathering.

"Hmmmm," one guest began. "Looks like SOMEBODY got a little color."

"Didn't you wear sunscreen?" another asked.

Truth be told, I wore SPF 8 sunscreen on my face. Let's do the math. SPF 8 means my face had eight times its normal resistance to a burn. I usually burn in two minutes. That gave me a full 16 protected minutes in the sun. I was out there for 90 minutes. I hate myself.

"I don't know what happened," I lied. "I wore SPF 45 and was only out there for an hour!"

Then everything was OK because everyone believed I at least had the good sense to apply sunscreen, even if I was too dumb to reapply it after swimming or sweating.

Fortunately, I have some foundation that works with my brand new skin tone. The makeup lady convinced me to buy some a couple shades darker for the summer. For the first few weeks, I looked like I'd put my head in a tanning bed and left my body in the dark. But now the makeup lets me turn my face from a bright red to sort of a mauve.

The trouble is my mind's eye, which sees me as a olive-toned beauty like my sister. She inherited the tanning genes that are rare and coveted in my family. Which is why she must be the surrogate mother for any children The Other Half and I plan to have. It will be our child's only chance for decent skin.

In the meantime, I'll be at the store looking for Solarcaine.

~Heidi Nieland is a former Southeast Missourian staff member who lives in Pensacola, Fla.