Male, 31, central PA. I see lots of Asian students and it’s starting to become a general trend, and I think it’s pretty cool actually. Certainly not even in the top twenty worst style trends this century.
I have a friend-of-a-friend from Illinois who uses one because of a skin condition that causes her to burn nearly instantly in sunlight, but she wants to be able to dress semi-normally and get out of the house. Pretty sure she’s not ACTUALLY a vampire.
I never see this, as I am in a freezing alaskan rainforest. Here, the wind blows so hard-no one ever carries umbrellas, and the days are so short and dark grey, we would hardly cover up, given a moment of sunshine.
The O.P. made me think of enchanting warm and colorful visions, which I will use in my next watercolor painting.
I’ve seen it some in my area as well a music festival in western Illinois. We have a lot of ethnic northern Europeans whose skin would fry in just an hour or two out in the sun. It gets up to 100 degrees with humidity so wearing long sleeves instead of a sundress or tank top isn’t something you’d want to do. Putting on sunscreen is somewhat icky and time consuming (if not using the spray-on type) and can rub off. Sometimes my shoulders or the top of my feet will burn even with sunscreen.
The word that comes to mind is ‘quaint’. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it IRL, unless you count sitting under one of those big sun umbrellas that are attached to some outdoor furniture.
It used to drive me nuts when I taught in China. My female students would cower under umbrellas at the slightest hint of enough sun- in a town that got less than twenty hours of sunshine in a month. The amount of drama that they felt compelled to add to the occasional appearance of light from the sky (and we are talking about maybe just enough break in the perpetual fog to cast a shadow for fifteen minutes) was pretty absurd.
It struck me as the fetishization of fussy, needy, overly-delicate women. It always made me laugh in Tibet, where the Chinese women tottered around on unsteady heels, swathed in face masks, sunglasses, and floofy dresses, hiding under parasols and looking generally unsuited for life, while the sturdy Tibeten young ladies swaggered on by with their cowboy hats, jeans and ruddy cheeks. I tried to develop my students as competent, capable women. And I think it undermines that when you start freaking out because OMG there is a sun in the sky and how am I going to walk across the quad without my umbrella, do you want me to look like some brown broke-down farm girl?!?! An able-bodied adult ought to be able to walk across the quad without the need of special contraptions.
Anyway, I’ve mellowed just a bit. I still think it’s a bit silly and regressive. I think the same thing about women who feel compelled to lug purses the size of toddlers everywhere they go, and basically anything else that is fussy and difficult. But i get that it’s a cultural thing, and it is what it is.
In many parts of Central America, it is quite common to see people (mostly women and kids) carrying umbrellas around on hot days, so I picked up the habit. Advantages to an umbrella over sunblock (although I normally use both on a very hot day): doesn’t cause your skin to break out, doesn’t have to be reapplied, won’t rub off on things, protects your eyes, and keeps you much cooler. There is a history of melanoma in my family, and I burn before I tan, so I try to be careful with my skin.
On Long Island, I’ve seen Asian ladies & Latinas using them.
No. It’s kind of like how this is different than this. Again, foggy San Francisco gets three times more sunshine than the place I’m talking about. Even London gets 50% more sunshine than this dreary little town. I think I’d see enough sun to cast a shadow maybe twice a month. The umbrellas were an affectation. It’s all about conveying your dedication to the quest for white skin, which is a quest as all consuming and destructive to women as the obsession with thinness among some groups of young women in the US. My student spent a ton of mental energy hating themselves for their skin tone, spending money on potentially carcinogenic creams and potions, calculating their exact place on the skin-tone pecking order and making an elaborate show of what they were not going to do in order to prove that they are just as dedicated to white skin as the next woman over.
It’d be fashionable to snidely say “Oh, really, Moli? You are going out to the dining hall for lunch? i couldn’t possibly do that. The sun is so strong. I wouldn’t want to become black and ugly!” in exactly the same tone an American sorority sister might say “Oh really, Tiffany? you are going to have a hamburger? I couldn’t possibly eat that! It’d go straight to my hips in a minute- I’ll just have a carrot stick and some water.” And just like the obsession with thinness hold women back because they don’t eat, the obsession with white skin hold women back because they don’t go outside and interact with the world.
I was a teacher and mentor. As such I’d have much rather seen my college students carrying around briefcases, novels, video camera, or anything else that says “I’m a competent, active, intellectually-curious, engaged person” than the umbrellas and giant teddy bears they preferred, which projected “My value is as a child that needs to be protected from even the sky above.”
I wish my student could have walked around campus confident and unencumbered like their male colleagues. Maybe the day will come when they can do that, and the parasols will become just another tool deployed logically for sun protection. But for now, in that time and place, they seems more like frilly burkas.
I wish I could do it without everybody thinking I’m weirder. I love the sun but it hates me.
This made me laugh. Just that phrasing made me think of a mob of people, converging angrily on, screaming obscenities at, and physically manhandling a poor parasol-toting innocent. I got a whole cinematic mini-movie out of that one line. Thanks!
But really, poorly received by whom? And why? Whose business is it and why would anyone care enough to poorly receive it in the first place? And why would I care about the opinion of anyone who cared enough to poorly receive it? It’s as trivial as caring about the opinion of those who might have negative opinions of people who go to the movies alone, or sit in the front row. My motto, thanks to Arline Feynman: “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
I have a lovely white fabric parasol that my mother-in-law gave me decades ago. She’s not Asian but got it when she lived in Japan. I’m of German-Irish-Swedish descent, and wear hats most often, but I use it occasionally. On the streets of Chicago even. I’ve never been physically or verbally abused, or even noticed a stink-eye. Chicagoans are pretty much live and let live, and the bottom line is, I wouldn’t care if anyone cares anyway. It keeps me cooler, I absolutely hate sunblock (too slimy and I sweat too much in the most extreme heat) and I don’t want to look like this, or this, or this when I get older.
I think it’s cute, and I frequently offer them a ride on my bicycle built for two. Or at least I used to before getting arrested.
Really? A frilly burka? Come on, Sven. You know that you spend alot of time on your appearance and presentation, including well fitting clothing, shoes and the perfectly timed story about your travels. These women are carrying something that is part of their culture. It is not shameful or made to cover them, as a matter of fact, the first link showed that it was somewhat flamboyant and meant to be seen (the face mask and parasol match), certainly not hiding. I guess only certain cultures are to be “learned from” but really, blocking UV rays in an attractive fashion doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to me.
Cad! Bounder! Masher!
Sunblock doesn’t do squat to block the rays of our little Radiation King in the sky. Of those few people I see sporting umbrellas, they are used on extremely hot days while they are walking what I am assuming is a moderate distance.
I agree. Also, I have two redheaded children, so I’m on board with anything that looks sunsmart.
Glad you enjoyed it. I meant it in more of a “tongues would start wagging in languages I don’t understand, so I’d be paranoid as a rabbit at a greyhound track,” way. But the more I think about it, the more I bet I’m underestimating people. After all, the countries those foreign tongues hail from seem to use parasols or umbrellas more than here, according to this thread. While I haven’t seen them in use around here, it would probably make people smile and think of “home”.
I’m working on it. 
I’ve never seen one here in Tel Aviv, and we get as much sun as anywhere. I suppose it has something to do with the near-absence of Chinese girls and the casual native dress code - it’s hard to make a parasol work with jeans and a tank-top, which is what 90% of the women wear during the summer.
My aforementioned solarphobe from Illinois would disagree vehemently with you here.
Vanessa Hudgens would disagree with you there.
