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Apart from having a face lift or spending thousands of dollars every five months on injectables to erase lines and wrinkles, there is nothing -yet- that can remove wrinkles from your neck and decoutage area. Yes, you can stick needles into your neck but Botox will not get rid of rings around the collar. There is nothing, not even exercise, that will restore lost collagen to a woman’s upper arms and thighs. And no matter how skinny she is, a woman cannot avoid having aging thighs jiggle like jello.

But there is a natural way for your body to avoid getting age spots and your skin feeling hard to the touch. Modern, contemporary women would never think of donning a parasol when going out in the sun, but centuries old southern belles understood the laws of aging. Drenching in sweat as we lie in the sun for hours at a time will always catch up. Just like a dried up prune, the sun harms especially Caucasian skin pigmentation quicker and more definitively than anything else can.

As a woman ages her skin loses not only collagen but moisture and a combination of menopause and the sun evaporates every last drop a woman’s skin so desperately wants to cling to. To understand better, run your hand along the parts of your body that are not regularly exposed to the sun (bikini wearers beware) then run your hand along those areas that are always exposed (not just your hands). The parts of your body that are always exposed will generally feel rough, even hard in spots. The parts that weren’t exposed to the rays of the sun over the decades will generally feel more soft and smooth.

If you still want to lie out and feel better for doing it, make it mandatory to use sunscreen. To protect against burning, according to a new Consumer Reports study the top four brands are also some of the least expensive. Up & Up Sport Continuous, which sells at Target for less than $10 for two 6-ounce containers, won top honors. The other three top brands were: Walgreens Sport Continuous; Banana Boat Sport Performance Continuous; and Aveeno Continuous Protection.

Most dermatologists would warn you not to walk outside the door unless you’re wearing a sunscreen with a number fifty or over. After spraying or spreading sunscreen all over my body and then having to smear myself again if I’ve gone into the water or stayed out too long and need to repeat coatings, and then my back still comes home burnt to a crisp, holding up a parasol doesn’t sound all that bad.