I am never going to be a contestant on "Survivor." It’s not the rats. It’s not the all-fish-all-the-time diet. It’s not the stupid challenges or the back stabbing or the bugs. Well, it’s a little bit the bugs. But it’s mostly the lack of sun screen.

Each week, I watch the little t.v. bunnies running around an island, toasting up like Stay-Puff marshmallows over a campfire. I don’t toast. I’m the marshmallow that fell off the stick, caught fire and exploded white oozy goo all over your shoe.

Dracula tans better than I do. There are albino rats with better color. While everyone else is digging around the bottom of their drawer for their shorts and swimsuits, going to the beach, hitting the golf course, hanging out by the pool, I’m at the drug store loading up my basket with SPF 45, zinc oxide, long sleeve shirts and umbrellas the size of Rhode Island.

I want to embrace this. I’m the child of the women who marched for equal rights, equal pay, control over their own bodies and their own lives. I want to be strong and independent and self-sufficient. I don’t want to care about frivolous things like having skin the color of coconuts. My higher intellect believes this. My ego buys self-tanning cream.

My ego spends an hour in the bathroom with a bottle of goop that smells like turpentine painting itself that oh-so-attractive radioactive orange hue. My ego under applies, over applies, turns out striped, gets pissed, drop kicks the bottle into the dumpster and swears it’s moving to Nova Scotia where no one will pressure it to wear a bikini.

My ego pouts. Then it goes and buys more sunscreen.