Column_IS IT POSSIBLE THROUGH A PANE?
I’m answering briefly the title question – evidently it’s possible but we know more pleasant and effective ways of sunbathing.
Why sunbathing all of the sudden? It was a hot topic rather during the winter, when you should dream about exposing a face to the sun light, also then came out “Krytyka Polityczna” (“Political Critique”), issue no. 11-12 (2007) with a polemic between Agata Bielik-Robson (ABR) and Kazimiera Szczuka (KS). Is it possible that, glared with June’s heat, became a label of a sun-tan oil with a proper sunscreen? Not really, not really and even – not at all, I assure, but with the sunbathing is a history as long as a cold season in Poland. Long and extremely complicated. It all started long time ago in a middle of the Third Republic of Poland with a text of ABR published in “ResPublica Nowa” (“the New ResPublic”), than the matter was thought in a text by KS about ABR and than it came back in the polemic between ABR and KS… Maciej Stroiński managed to give an account of who wrote what and where, discussing the mentioned issue of “Krytyka Polityczna” so I’ll be relieved to skip it. It’s necessary to say that one of the matters – who knows if not the main one – was love. Not the average one but true and maybe even unconditional.
The matter is such serious insomuch love is love but the exchange of opinions between ABR and KS concerns also a betrayal of feministic ideals, which I’m not so familiar with. What’s more my opinion is that as far as commenting separately texts of those two polemists is a task for staid people with discriminating views concerning most of the matters or even all matters, on the other hand commenting views of both polemists in the same time is a desperate deed. Still or just because of it I’ll try.
In a center of the article of ABR and later polemic of KS is “emblematic” (as it wants ABR) picture – she sits, being a little girl, on a chair opposite a window and at her Nanny’s suggestion, without an inner believe, she’s sunbathing in sunbeams through the closed window. She sits without the inner believe because in some way she shares views of her father Physician who says senselessly to Nanny that such sunbathing doesn’t result a suntan. “What he knows!” says Nanny and ABR, being a little girl at that time, exposes a face to the sun with a love to her.
ABR described that picture in 1996, what’s strange – I unusually had remembered the text from “ResPublica Nowa”, especially anecdote about Nanny, father Physician and sunbathing through a pane, maybe because the picture is emblematic (as it wants ABR). At any rate I had remembered it so well that when few years later I encountered a press note from a cycle “scientists discovered that” I immediately associated facts (whatever the word “fact” means).
But before I’ll write what I’ve read, one more reservation – I don’t know nothing about love, especially that true and maybe even unconditional. However – I can listen to stories of people more experienced than I and to comply with advices which result from them.
And now, after the reservation I can state – scientists affirm that according to researches, of course experimented in unknown to me circumstances and laboratories, there is no easy answer what goes through a pane and what not, in any case light trying to pass the pane is composed from what we see and an ultraviolet, the last one, further called UV, is composed from beams UV-A and UV-B. Only UV-A goes through the pane totally (and also through other things), UV-B hardly, but – attention – both types of UV give a suntan. To tell the truth UV-A gives a light suntan and for short, because it penetrate only into epidermis, but it does.
So it’s possible to sunbath through the pane! For a moment, epidermal but it’s possible! However, of course it’s impossible to look like Negro sunbathing through the pane – and what is not indifferent for health and what is not indifferent is important – it’s almost impossible to get enough dose of vitamin D. Yes, the one preventing rickets and protects against osteoporosis. So the ABR’s Nanny was right. But also father Physician was right because it’s UV-B which, reaching to deeper layers of skin, gives a suntan for longer and what’s more it benefits health – without UV-B so without walks on fresh air won’t generate proper form and dose of vitamin D. And without vitamin D, it’s well known – rickets or osteoporosis are sure, from this it follows that moderate sunbaths are recommended by educated hygienists. It’s important to mark here that news about effects of UV type A and B occurred during few last years, before no-one knew about this, they only speculated. On the other hand, to make it more interesting (and to support thesis that it’s possible through the pane), panes, if are not dirty in chemical sense, they let through also UV-B. But rather – they used to, because since so called complex panes for home use started to be produced we have to forget about penetrating them by UV-B. Well, in times of ABR’s childhood, which was also my time of childhood, there were no complex panes in homes then, but they also weren’t clean in chemical sense. It results from this all that both the Nanny and the father weren’t much wrong, but they couldn’t know about it or evidence it. Since the mind, as it is possible to observe on the example of the light and the pane, makes progress in its dualisms to tell the truth, but very slowly. In this all the most right was ABR herself, because she believed both in the same time.
I’m not wrong neither. After reading the polemic between ABR and KS I believed both experts of love. And just about that – possibly – nobody makes an error being wrong at the same time was to be this column.
Cezary Konrad Kęder
Translated by Agnieszka Żbikowska