#How not to apply sunscreen

This beach fail is a head and shoulders above the rest.

Britain’s Leanne Gresty has become the universal example of how not to apply sunblock after a recent jaunt left her with a scorching hot handprint tan.

On a day trip to the New Brighton, Merseyside beach with her family last month, the 35-year-old haphazardly slapped a hand of sunblock over each shoulder. When she subsequently burned, the handprints were the only part of her that didn’t, and the burn is the envy of single ladies everywhere.

“I don’t burn often, so I didn’t ask anybody to put it on for me,” she told Kennedy News Wire. “Where the sun cream had been, obviously it had worked. Those hand marks were there for a couple of days afterwards.” 

Initially, when her sister first noticed the humorous tan line, she thought it was a result of Gresty’s daughter’s sand antics. 

“I didn’t even really feel the marks were there at first. It was my sister who said ‘Oh, somebody’s put sand on your back,’” Gresty said. “My daughter had put her hands on my back after she’d been playing in the sand, but when my sister tried brushing it off, it wouldn’t come off.”

It was at that point that she realized “Oh god, that’s where I put my sun cream on!” 

While she was the only one who walked away from the beach that day with her own handprints demarcated on her back, her whole family burnt that day, she noted defensively. “It wasn’t just me.” 

She immediately saw the humor in the situation, though. 

“I thought it was hilarious straight away,” she said. 

Strangers also found it quite amusing. 

“When people point it out, we’ve been having a laugh about it,” she said. “Two or three days later, I was walking down the street, and this lad on a bike rode past me. As he went by, he just yelled ‘S–t man, that looks sore!’ I said back, ‘Yeah, it is a bit.’ Then that same day, I walked past this young girl, and she shouted to me ‘Oh my god, look at those big hand marks on your back!’”

So many people commented, she considered changing the story of how the prints ended up caressing her back. 

“I could have said some sexy hunk had his arms around me the whole time. That would have been a better story. It would have been more exciting,” she said. 

Her real hope, however, is that people learn from her mistake. 

“Hopefully what people did think when they saw the marks was ‘Ooh, that’s an effective sun cream,’” she said. “It shows that it’s efficient and good when you use it in the right places.”