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Robocop was making 2000 SPF jokes in 1997. That means that the risk of UV was something that people were “aware” of but the pop-culture take was that high-SPF sunscreens were a bit of a joke and “a terrible future” where you had to take it seriously was something to make fun of as well.

As I recall, the high-SPF sunscreen in the Robocop spoof included a warning that the sunscreen itself was carcinogenic. This is more evidence that that the intent was not to warn of the very real risks of the sun but rather to take shots at the rapid increase in SPF ratings ( going from 2 and 4 being normal and weirdos buying 8 to 30 and 45 being common on the shelf if memory serves ).

Edit: sorry, it was 5000 SPF https://youtu.be/8oJzfmWO3CU

Being aware and caring about it are different things. When I was a child and my family went to a beach (which was roughly maybe 2 weeks out of a year), parents encouraged tanning a lot. "Get those sun vitamins" and all.

And then my grandfather died from skin cancer. You bet that as an adult, I am not exposing much of my skin to sun at all when I am out on a sunny day, and I apply sunscreen to my face daily. I have no issues with being shirtless otherwise, and do it quite often, mostly at the gym.

Disclaimer: my gym is a small local one, not a massive chain, and being shirtless there is both explicitly allowed and is very common. At any given point, about a quarter of the people there will be shirtless.

Well, I am old so perhaps my anecdotal opinions are invalid. That said, I would have been young and in shape enough 20 years ago to take my shirt off and I would not have considered UV a real risk. My mother and girlfriends may have started to use real sunscreen instead of baby oil but they were still heading to the beach for rays and I still basically ignored the stuff. I feel like even younger people view the sun as a much more serious danger these days.

I think it's much more common to see people in long sleeves with heavy sunblock at the beach than it was 20 years ago.

I think a good barometer is to look at how people dress their kids. I don't remember any kids in my youth wearing sunshirts at camp. And while my mom always sent us with sunblock, it wasnt mandatory. Lots of kids at my kids' camp come well protected from the sun.