Busy Philipps sunburned her eyes
FYI: Not only is it possible for your eyes to be sunburned, but it can happen without the presence of the actual sun.
Actress Busy Philipps ( Freaks & Geeks, Cougar Town) last week experienced this nightmare after an allday photoshoot.
She shared the experience on her Instagram, alongside a picture of herself in a hospital bed, writing, “Spent last night at Cedars after I couldn’t sleep because it felt like there were shards of glass in both my eyes. I have Photo Keratitis from bright lights/sun exposure!”
She added in an Instagram stor y, “It ’s so on- brand though. I get one big magazine cover, and I do one photo shoot, and I burn my eyeballs.”
Photokeratitis is a painful but temporary condition that happens when eyes are overexposed to UV rays or artificial light, like that of a tanning bed. Another form of the condition has been dubbed “snow blindness,” — in other words, a lot of bright white.
In her stories, Philipps explained that she had blurry vision for most of the day and found it difficult to open her eyes, describing it as what felt like a “crazy allergic reaction.”
While it’s more common to hear of this condition happening after prolonged exposure to the sun, it’s not uncommon for it to happen thanks to the brunt of flashing cameras. In a 2010 Gawker profile, model Sena Cech detailed some of the hidden horrors in the industry — including a similar experience to Philipps’. She described doing a shoot for Air France Magazine, where she was called in after another model had to leave early due to an “allergic reaction.”
Cech said, “They told me she’d gotten hair in her eyes while they were cutting her bangs. They said ‘ Get down there!’ It was really weird when I got there. So they do my hair and makeup. Then the photographer was shooting and he’s using a UV flash, and it burned the first six layers of the whites of my eyes. Six cell layers. It even burned the assistant’s arm.”
More recently, on The Late Show, Angela Bassett described filming the waterfall scene in Black Panther with co-stars Lupita Nyong’o and Daniel Kaluuya, and how all of their eyes were burned from the brightness of the reflection in the water.
Photokeratitis doesn’t last more than a few days, but keep in mind that the Canadian Cancer Society says that people with blue, green or grey eyes have a higher risk of developing intraocular melanoma. No matter your eye colour, it’s probably best to not look directly into the sun.