You’ve probably heard the lines. "Wear sunscreen." Or maybe that bit about the real troubles in life being the ones that "blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday."
It’s iconic. It’s been on posters, in greeting cards, and sampled in a chart-topping Baz Luhrmann song. But there’s a huge chance you still think Kurt Vonnegut wrote it. Or maybe you heard it was a graduation speech at MIT.
Neither is true.
The real story of Mary Schmich Wear Sunscreen—the essay originally titled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young"—is actually a wild lesson in how the internet can swallow the truth and spit out a legend. It wasn't a speech. It was just a column written by a tired journalist on a Friday afternoon.
The Day the Internet Invented a Legend
Mary Schmich was a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. It was June 1, 1997. Graduation season was in full swing, and Schmich was walking to work when she saw a young woman sunbathing.
She thought to herself, "I hope she’s wearing sunscreen."
That’s it. That was the spark. Schmich sat down, probably fueled by coffee and M&Ms (her own admission), and wrote a "hypothetical" commencement speech. She was 43 at the time. She felt she had some things to say to the kids.
Within weeks, the column was everywhere. But not under her name.
Someone—nobody knows who—stripped her byline and slapped on a title claiming it was the 1997 MIT Commencement Address delivered by Kurt Vonnegut. It went viral before "going viral" was a thing. People were forwarding it via AOL and Netscape, weeping over the "wisdom" of the great Vonnegut.
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Why Everyone Thought It Was Vonnegut
Honestly, it makes sense. The tone is cynical yet hopeful. It’s got that "so it goes" vibe.
But MIT's actual speaker that year was Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He did not talk about flossing. He did not mention the "funky chicken" at a 75th wedding anniversary.
When the rumor reached Vonnegut, he was actually quite gracious about it. He told the New York Times that he would have been proud had the words been his. But the confusion caused a massive headache for Schmich. She had to write another column just to prove she existed.
The Famous Lines (That Weren't From a Speech)
- "Do one thing every day that scares you." People often attribute this to Eleanor Roosevelt, but it was Mary Schmich.
- "Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements."
- "Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85."
From Newspaper Column to Global Pop Hit
If the email chain wasn't enough, the piece became immortal because of Baz Luhrmann.
The Romeo + Juliet director was working on a remix when his team got the "Vonnegut" email. They loved it. They wanted to turn it into a spoken-word track. They eventually tracked down the truth, got Schmich's permission, and released "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)."
The song hit number one in the UK and Ireland. It was a weird, five-minute lecture set to a beat, and somehow, we all loved it.
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The Science of the Advice
Is the advice actually good? Well, Schmich admits herself in the text: "The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience."
She wasn't lying. Dermatologists have been shouting about SPF for decades. While the science of exactly which ingredients are best has evolved (we talk more about UVA/UVB broad spectrum now), the core message holds up.
But the "life advice" part is where the nuance lies.
Schmich’s point wasn't to be a guru. It was about nostalgia. She calls advice a "form of nostalgia," a way of fishing the past out of the disposal and wiping it off. It’s why the essay resonates with 20-somethings and 60-somethings alike. It captures that feeling of looking back at your younger self and realizing you weren't "as fat as you imagined."
What Most People Get Wrong Today
People still treat the "Sunscreen" speech as a set of rules. It’s not. It’s a satire of the genre of commencement speeches.
Schmich was poking fun at the idea that older people have all the answers. She was 43 when she wrote it—an age she described as being "high on the fumes of my own life."
The genius of Mary Schmich Wear Sunscreen is that it admits it's all half-chance anyway. "Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's," she wrote. That’s a lot more honest than most graduation speakers who tell you to "follow your dreams" and ignore the fact that the economy might collapse on a Tuesday.
How to Actually Apply the "Sunscreen" Logic
If you want to take something away from the most famous column in history, don't just buy SPF 50. Look at the smaller stuff.
- Audit your "worrying" budget. If worrying is as effective as "trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum," maybe stop doing it at 2 am.
- Check your knees. This is a weirdly specific piece of advice in the essay, but ask anyone over 50. They'll tell you she was right.
- Ignore the beauty magazines. They still "make you feel ugly," just like they did in 1997. Except now it's Instagram filters.
Mary Schmich eventually won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for her commentary. She wrote thousands of columns over decades at the Chicago Tribune. Yet, for most of the world, she’ll always be the "Sunscreen Lady."
It’s a strange legacy, but not a bad one.
Next time you’re at a graduation and the speaker starts droning on about "the future," remember that the best advice ever written started with a lady eating M&Ms and staring at a sunbather on a Friday afternoon.
Take Action: Dig out an old photo of yourself from ten years ago. You’ll probably realize you looked way better than you thought you did at the time. Then, go buy a fresh bottle of broad-spectrum sunscreen.