Jana Kramer often gets headlines for the dumb sh-t she says on her podcast. She’s accused Travis Kelce of being a drunk without ever having met him, admitted to trashing her ex-husband’s stuff, and revealed that her kids all had covid during her Scottish wedding last year. She reminds me of Kristin Cavallari. Speaking of Kristin, she and Jana have at least one thing in common: they are both sunscreen skeptics. On a recent episode, Jana invited people to “come at me” for not trusting sunscreen enough to use it on her children regularly.
Jana Kramer, 41, spoke with her friend Kathryn Woodard on her podcast Whine Down with Jana Kramer about how Woodard’s teenage kids are starting to become obsessed with tanning and are looking up the UV index. As she asks Kramer for advice on how to get her kids to wear sunscreen, Kramer admits she doesn’t always use it on her kids.
“Time out really fast. Let me just go back because I’m gonna get a lot of hate on this. I am well aware that I should have worn sunscreen as a child. I am well aware,” Kramer began. “And I know my mom put on the Coppertone Baby, whatever SPF on me. Having said that, my mother was the generation who used no sunscreen and used the baby oil, right? If my mother gave me anything more than an 8 SPF, I would be like, ‘I cannot get a tan with anything less than 8.’”
The mom of three says that she would routinely use the tanning oil that had 8 SPF in it and never got burned until a cast trip to Puerto Rico during her time on One Tree Hill. She explains that she started wearing sunscreen more often in her thirties since her skin had changed.
“I don’t use sunscreen on my kids unless it’s going to be for hours outside because I know they don’t burn,” says Kramer, who shares daughter Jolie, 9, and son Jace, 6, with ex Mike Caussin, plus 19-month-old son Roman with husband Allan Russell. “And there’s so much bad stuff in sunscreen that if we’re not going to be out there for more than a couple hours, listen, come at me. But I’m just not putting it on.”
“I will if we’re on the beach for hours and the reflection of all the things, like I’ll put it on his neck, his ears — the baby — but like the kids, I haven’t put on any on them because I’m like, they’re not getting burned,” she continues. “What’s worse, the burn, or the suntan lotion?”
According to experts, sunscreen is not toxic. “There’s been a lot of negative [reports] towards sunscreen out there, and it kind of stems from different reasons,” Dr. Raman Madan, Director of Cosmetic Dermatology at Northwell Health told PEOPLE in June.
“One of them is that people say that sunscreen can be absorbed into the bloodstream,” he said, explaining, “it’s a small, small, small amount” with some chemical sunscreens. However, he said, you can wear mineral-based sunscreens like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, and “those won’t be absorbed by your body.”
Regarding the environmental impact of sunscreens, some “can harm coral reefs in some locations like in Hawaii and parts of Mexico, but if you’re wearing the mineral-based zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, this is reef-safe, so it will be a non-issue again.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and I think people are just trying to find reasons not to wear sunscreen” he said.
Dr. Madan continued, saying that base tans are not good protection against the sun.
“A base tan, I don’t think is a good idea, because tanning, no matter how minimal, causes UV radiation to damage the DNA in your cells,” he explained. “Your body basically reacts by producing more melanin, which is more of a defense, not a health benefit.”
When it comes to “protecting you from the sun,” a base tan “may give you the equivalent of SPF 3,” he said, compared to sunscreens which “start at basically SPF 15 or 30.”
Besides, with “a base tan, you have an increased risk of skin cancer, and [it] also accelerates aging. So you can get wrinkles, age spots, from having this ‘base tan.’ So. I’m not a fan of base tans.”
Dr. Madan’s recommendation is to wear sunscreen whenever you’re out in the sun. “Honestly, SPF 30 and above is more than enough,” he explained. “With SPF 30, it basically gives you about 97% coverage from the sun. There’s nothing to calculate.”
Dr. Madan said as long as you are “cognizant about reapplying it every two to three hours when you’re outside or if you go in the water, you’ll be fine.”
Jana was all over the place with that answer, right? Like, she knows that you need to protect your skin from sun damage, but also refuses to put it together that you can get that damage from childhood exposure. Just put sunscreen on your children! It’s painful to get sunburns and you’re risking long term skin damage and cancer. You can use a mineral-based sunscreen as People’s dermatology expert mentioned if you’re concerned about the miniscule amount absorbed through the skin. You can also use long-sleeved bathing shirts. This kind of rage baiting works and gets people to talk about influencers, but it’s so harmful to spread misinformation like this.
Photos credit: Getty and via Instagram/Jana Kramer
