#22 - The Best Skincare Tips I Have To Offer

Advertising feels extra-insidious these days, and I think one of my major annoyances in the self-care and wellness-washing of skincare products has been the obfuscation and misaligned focus on why taking care of your skin is actually a really important thing to do.

So, I’m not going to try to sell you anything. In fact, skincare is definitely a realm in which price is not a great indicator of quality. (La Mer may have been the wealthy woman’s gold-standard at one point, but if you were born after 1990 and have a $500 tub of moisturizer that hasn’t been the best thing on the market since before you were born I’m going to think you’re flaunting your wealth and not even doing it well. Do you know how many Balenciaga City Bags you can snag on The Real Real for $500 and you’re wasting it on perfumed crème that doesn’t even come in sterile packaging??)

I think it’s worth mentioning that skincare is incredibly gendered, and I find it equally sad and hilarious that we have made the concept of “taking care of yourself” a feminine act. We all have skin! So much skin! The skin is the largest organ of the body! It’s a major line of defense in our immune system! We should be taking care of it—not because wrinkles are bad, but because it hurts when your facial skin feels tight and dry and it doesn’t have to be this way!

In my ongoing efforts to slow down and take time for things, I have become more dedicated to my skincare habits but cut the actual number of products I use by half. And in hopes of making taking care of ones skin uncomplicated and maybe even enticing, here are the five best tips I have when it comes to care.

#1 Wash your face for a full minute

It doesn’t matter what kind of cleanser you’re using if you don’t use it for long enough! This revolutionized my skin in terms of cleanliness and texture (shoutout to  the creator of this method @LaBeautyologist one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter!). Be gentle, go slow, it’s gonna be great. I swapped to the Cerave gentle cleanser a few months ago and realized my previous cleanser had been over-stripping my skin and that was the cause of a lot of the irritation I was dealing with! You really don’t have to get fancy with cleansers, Cetaphil and Cerave are classics for a reason.

#2 Oil pulling

Rub oil (I use rosehip seed or squalane, but there are also oil cleansers!) on your face for three minutes, and then wash it off with your cleanser. The results will amaze you and you’ll have all these little grimy bits all over your fingers when you’re finished that will both make you want to throw up but also feel deeply satisfied that your nose is virtually sebum-free for the first time in forever.

Once again, Nai @LaBeautyologist, with the best tips!

#3 Brush your hair

Brush it a lot (like old school 100 times on both sides kinda deal) with a boar-bristle hybrid brush, and not only will it have better oil distribution throughout, it also stimulates growth. Win-win! (Also, if you do this after getting a lil stoned it feels amazing.) Also! Wash your hairbrushes weekly!

#4 Be gentle

There’s rarely anything to be gained from harsh physical exfoliation of your face (or really most of your skin, except your heels maybe). Your fingers rubbing against your skin in gentle circles is really the harshest abrasion that most of us should be applying to our facial areas. (And when it comes to drying off, use my favorite trick I gained from reading The Clique novels, pat don’t rub with your towel.)

#5 Wear sunscreen — even inside.

This is the big one. Not only should you be wearing sunscreen with a decent amount of SPF every day, but you should also be doing that even if you’re not in contact with direct sunlight. And you should probably be using a lot more sunscreen for just your face. The measurement I go by is a full two fingers. I pat it on, let the product warm-up, and then I rub it in. Not only have I saved my skin from the sunburn I’m absolutely susceptible to since I sit in front of an open window during work, but it’s also helped soothe irritation and texture, something I was unaware was coming from sun damage.

Cleanse, moisturize. That’s all you have to do. Add another step if you feel fancy! You’ll feel so great if you do it every day, ideally twice a day. I promise, it’s not for the sake of having ‘glowing’ skin (or attempting to cling to youth because as women age we treat them as if they matter less since the only thing we’ve ever learned to value from women is based around strict and ever-shrinking standards of beauty and not…any of the other traits inherent to femininity that literally make the world go round (community care, crafts, mindfulness of the emotional needs of others, and crafts/handwork come to mind)) but rather the fact that when you take care of your skin, it feels better to exist in it.

We deserve to feel the best we can inside of our bodies. And our bodies deserve compassion for what they face in the world. It’s cold right now and my lips don’t deserve to be ripped apart! Lifes tough, be gentle with yourself! Put on lip balm and crank the humidifier babe!!