The Best Ways to Protect Yourself From the Sun 2025 | The Strategist

Where someone with years of hard-won personal experience, and lots of trial and error, shares everything they’ve learned. Read more here.

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Where someone with years of hard-won personal experience, and lots of trial and error, shares everything they’ve learned. Read more here.

The sun is evil. Sure, it keeps the planet running, is food for plants, and causes pretty sunsets or whatever, but the sun also makes people ugly, and that is unforgivable. And if you think using sunscreen is enough? You’re lazy and wrong. I make it my mission to shield every inch of my exposed, vulnerable, high-risk skin, including hands, forearms, chest, neck, and knees. Yeah, people mock me. But we’ll see who’s laughing when my knees look sexy forever!

Living in sun-drenched L.A. means I’ve had to get crafty to achieve full coverage. So I’ve built an arsenal of tools, tricks, and habits to keep the sun where it belongs — 90 million miles away.

Sun sleeves are life. If my forearms are bare on a hike, in the car, or anywhere outside, I go into a low-grade panic imagining my arms going full crone like I’m in The Substance. Thusly, I’ve amassed a robust collection of stretchy, breathable sun sleeves that are always at arm’s reach (literally). Having multiple pairs is essential: I stash them by the front door, in my car, and in various purses. And, yes, I have multiple colors so I can coordinate them with my outfits. These from Amazon have held up well. They’ve lasted me years, have a snug elastic that hasn’t stretched out, don’t get pill-y, and don’t snag on my jewelry.

When I’m driving my whip around L.A. (which feels like approximately half my life), the backs of my hands take a beating from the hot sun blaring through my Nissan windshield. And we all know that hands, with their thin skin, are one of the first parts of us to show signs of aging. Close your eyes and imagine your grandmother’s hands. You don’t want that happening to you, do you? Me neither.

The solution? Driving gloves. Yes, they look unhinged. But they are surprisingly comfortable, leave my fingers free (a must when I’m trying to fast-forward through a boring podcast), and, as a bonus, have little grippy dots on the palm that latch onto my steering wheel and give me Formula 1 energy when I make a hard right into the Taco Bell parking lot.

In the summer, I love pool rotting, which is when I marinate in a pool for hours on end, chain-drinking Spindrifts. But if you’re a sun-fearing goblin like myself, you know that pools basically act as a big UV mirror, bouncing and amplifying ugly-making rays right onto your beautiful skin. Sure, you could reapply sunscreen every two hours, but that gets old quickly.

A few summers ago, I converted to the rash guard life, and I can’t recommend it enough. Most of them are crewneck, boxy, and sad, but I found a cropped, zippered rash guard that’s actually cute. It hits right at the waist, pairs well with a bikini, and I love that I can adjust the zipper for a little sex appeal and cleave action. Sex appeal and rash guards might seem like counterintuitive ideas, but I swear, this one delivers. Back when I was on Raya, a pic of me wearing this rash guard always got a surprising amount of responses from suitors. Hot tip: Size down for a sexier, snugger fit.

A wide-brimmed hat is obviously a nonnegotiable for sun protection. My preference is an open-top, wide-brimmed straw hat. During the summer, my hair lives in a bun, which makes most regular hats impossible to wear. But the open-top sun hat fits perfectly right around my messy bun and keeps my face nice and shaded. The best part is that they roll up, so they’re so easy to pack. I can easily throw one in my suitcase for trips or keep one in my backpack for long days on set.

For moments when I need to look more fashion-forward and less farmhand, I reach for my bucket hats from the fancy Australian hat brand Lack of Color. They’re a splurge, but every time I wear one, I get tons of compliments. I love the canvas material, the oversize brim, the chic colorways, and the inclusion of an underrated feature, the hat strap, which you better believe I tie around my chin at the suggestion of a breeze.

If you’re someone who is in the market for sun sleeves, I probably don’t need to preach the gospel of applying sunscreen every morning. Recently, I’ve committed to switching to mineral sunscreen, and the only one I’ve found that doesn’t feel greasy or heavy on my acne-prone skin is this product from the Korean brand Madagascar Centella.

But anyone as unhinged as me about sun protection knows the real secret isn’t just applying sunscreen in the morning — it’s reapplying every two hours. Which, let’s be honest, no one actually does. The only reason I’ve managed to be consistent with sunscreen reapplication is this magical sunscreen stick. It’s a miraculous Korean formula that’s insanely matte, superlight, and airy to the point that you barely feel it go on. It even glides pretty nicely over makeup and mattifies my oily afternoon skin — like I somehow look better after swiping this on, which is just ridiculous. It’s the only sunscreen I’ve ever used that I actually look forward to putting on.

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