Sunday Thoughts
On Skincare
Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy Series.
Last week I was interviewed by someone looking to develop a new skincare line. As someone who worked within facial aesthetics in the recent past and as someone with a nutrition background I have a lot to input. However, it quickly became a deep dive into my skincare past and present. An exploration of my habits and a bit of a therapy session with a skincare theme.
Here is realisation number one; I spend a lot of money on skincare. Well, no surprises there because I a professional woman with a disposable income, isn’t that what capitalism is all about? You earn to spend. That's the thing, I consider myself immune to the corruption of capitalism, priding myself in knowing all the tacts. Here is the other thing, out of my circle of friends, mine is a basic skincare routine. As in most days, I do not wash my face if I am not wearing makeup, I only exfoliate every once in a while and I skip night cream altogether because my grandmother did and she has excellent skin ( although we aren’t genetically related). What is shocking to me was that I spend a ton of money to sit in the drawers, only to be used intermittently. This isn’t a love affair with skincare turned sour through disenchantment or the power of aesthetic and nutritional knowledge. I have always exhibited this casual relationship to skincare, makeup, and even body care. I have never been drawn to its lustrous allure. So I am just as confused as you are reader at my highly stocked skincare drawer and a bathroom shelf. The final and possibly the most telling of all revelation is that all these products are just for my face. I have two body products. So am I internalising external validation? Something I only realised as a consequence of this interview.
I have some basic rules to help me along the way that have been refined through time ( see professional disposable income, aesthetics industry experience, and nutrition knowledge above). If I am using a product it has to be of high quality containing mostly natural ingredients; I will always take makeup off followed by a moisturiser; every once in a while a home facial of cleansing, exfoliating mask, serum, and moisturiser is a luxury that has been a self-care lifeline this last year; and I always recycle the packaging because worse than all the chemicals is the ethical burden I carry where about where all these plastic containers might end up.
When it comes to professional know-how and advising my patient and clients here are tips that are better than the best skincare. Even when I was filling women’s skin with dermal filler and injecting them with botox I maintained my recipe for lasting skincare as following. Staying away from processed sugar and fats in the diet, its is adequate hydration, it is sleep and most importantly it is not taking your skincare too seriously. This is my lasting formula for the skin that will see me through for however many decades to come ( just don’t tell my friends who are dermatologists, facialists, or aesthetics partitioners).
“Your skin has a memory. In ten, twenty, thirty years from now, your skin will show the results of how it was treated today. So treat it kindly and with respect. ”