Our Skin Care, Our Selves

Or is it Our Salves?

Dame Karen: Sooo! Let’s talk skin care! 

Dame Sophie: Yeah, baby! Skin! We all have it! We might go so far as to say we quite have skin…in the game (of life). 

DKNY: Skin care has really become A Thing online over the past decade and I’m a little weary at this point, honestly. 

DS & Durga: SUCH a thing! I remain very into skin care, but I was just thinking to myself what a scam skin itself is (in part because it covers our entire bodies, which are among the most famous and egregious of scams), and how annoying it is that we have to take care of that, TOO, on top of every other damn thing pertaining to our corporeal existence. 

DK: Great point; our collective mental health is pretty poor right now, like, worldwide, and also we need to worry about what’s literally holding our dumb little bodies together, too?! And yet here we are. I do admit that having a Skin Routine is something that keeps the inevitable passing of time a little more bearable to me. I ALSO admit that I have cut way down on the number of things I do to my skin and it doesn’t seem to mind at all. Like, sheet masks? A drippy, slimy scam. I’m done with them forever, I don’t care how cute the Tony Moly packaging is!!! 

DS: I have also streamlined my routine a bit. After years of trying to make it work using only topical products, I finally acknowledged that I just have adult acne, that hormones have a huge effect on it, and I appealed to a higher power (my dermatologist) who said, “oh, we can fix you right up, here’s a prescription for spironolactone.” Wouldn’t you just know that it works GREAT? All my friends who recommended it were right! I maintain and use a supply of little skin patches (both the regular kind & the kind with microneedles) but I need far fewer and everything heals up faster. 

DK: Hell yeah, I love that for you! I have extremely oily facial skin but don’t get a lot of acne; more of a blackheads and general “congestion” situation. I also like little skin patches--tell me about these microneedle ones! 

DS: The ones I use are Acropass Trouble Cure patches, and I’m pretty sure I found these via some listicle on The Strategist. It’s a two-part product that works especially well on cystic/hormonal acne, and it’s been a game-changer for me. Despite the dermatological miracle that is spironolactone, I still get one of those super-painful and instantly inflamed jerks popping up every few weeks, and they need extra TLC. So! You swipe the little pad (soaked in tea tree oil and salicylic acid) over the affected area, let it dry for 30 seconds or so, and then apply the patch over it. It stings ever so slightly when you apply it, but the microneedles – which are tiny little spikes of hyaluronic acid – dissolve in your skin. Describing it, I realize how science fictiony this sounds, but the proof is in the pudding: these guys bring down redness and inflammation, they nip the cysts in the bud, they reduce scarring, and everything heals better and faster. The drawbacks are that they’re pricey and include a ton of packaging, but they’re a classic Does Just What It Says On The Tin product.

DK: Very into all of this. I’m just coming off a Big, Painful Zit right on the chin debacle and could have used this helpful friend.

DS: I’m a BIG fan, and another advantage of using them (and their close cousin, the little flat patches that I buy in bulk) is that they keep the wound covered and moist. In fact, using these patches – hydrocolloid bandages, really –  has shifted my entire understanding of acne. Rather than getting upset with or blaming myself for still having acne at nearly 50 Earth years of age, I can now think to myself, “well, this is a small wound that needs some very careful First Aid.” That makes it so much easier to summon my unflappable and kind inner Red Cross-certified Babysitter to attend to her eternal patient. And in terms of their practical usefulness, all of these kinds of patches also reduce the temptation to pick, which also reduces any scarring & hyperpigmentation. I think you can buy a variety pack of these guys at your local pharmacy, and can even cut patches to the sizes you need which is cheaper and less wasteful! 

DK: Nice; I am always giving in to the terrible urge to pick and keeping things covered really helps. What do you use to just wash your face? I was into all sorts of harsh, “for oily skin” stuff for years but then I switched to Cetaphil and lo and behold, a gentle wash is actually a better one. I feel like the ‘80s and ‘90s were all about overly harsh solutions -- see also tearing off the entire first layer of one’s face with St. Ives Apricot Scrub. I still crave that smell, though, not gonna lie. I do like a twice weekly physical exfoliation, still. Right now I’m using this Acure Green Clay scrub and my skin seems to like it? It scrubs for sure but gently. I’m such a sucker for “brightening” products and I don’t even know what they’re supposed to do! Is my skin literally bright? “Glowy”? F if I know, but the copywriting, the marketing, it gets to me. Probably an aging thing. 

AM I GLOWING YET?!

DS: Definitely an aging thing. My face should be a damn flashlight at this point thanks to the many products I’ve used that allege to be brightening. And like you, I subjected myself to those super-harsh products in the 90s. I’m sorry, skin! You deserved better! My skin isn’t particularly sensitive, but I’ve noticed that everything works better and my typical shtetl pallor is just pale, rather than red-and-pale, when I use products formulated for sensitive skin. 

DK: Great point; my own shtetl pallor season fast approaches! Now I want to smell a big bottle of harsh-as-formaldehyde Sea Breeze riiiiiight now, though. Sea Breeze is my madeleines, Proust could never, etc. etc.  

so refreshing!

DS: Proust wishes! And to actually answer your question, my current favorite cleansers are this super-gentle one from the French pharmacy brand Avene and Paula’s Choice low-concentration salicylic acid cleanser, which is particularly helpful in the summer, as it can be trusted to remove tenacious sunscreen residue without turning my face into a reactive, parched hellscape. I’ve been known to over-stock the skincare section of the bathroom and am making my way through everything in there, which is kind of a fun variation on the shop-your-wardrobe advice stylists are (correctly) always giving. I’m challenging myself not to replace products as I go along, to test my newfound hunch that more may not be more (huge, if true!) I find I do need some extra hydration help in the wintertime, so I’m swapping out the gel moisturizers of summer for the heavier Snail Bee High Content Steam Cream of winter. Most recently, I’m using up the nice Soy Face Cleanser from Fresh, which is gentle but effective, and smells lightly of one of my favorite crispy water foods, cucumber. (A good, far more reasonably priced dupe is e.l.f.’s Bounce Back Jelly Cleanser, which I’ll probably switch to once I’m out of the Fresh cleanser. e.l.f. and Naturium are two good-quality brands I really like, and they’re both available at Target.)

DK: Ooooo, removing sunscreen residue is KEY! All hail salicylic acid.  I’m doing a similar thing right now because I ran out of two staple chemical exfoliates and have been too lazy to reorder. I normally alternate between The Ordinary’s Granactive Retinoid 2% Emulsion and their Lactic Acid 10% + HA, which are cheap and effective and I try to just ignore the lingering weird feelings from those stories about the guy that founded The Ordinary from a few years back, sorry sorry. I follow both with a healthy smear of Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5, then Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA. Right now I’m out of the exfoliates so I’m using Burt’s Bees Brightening (of course) Refining Tonic, which I believe was a Nicole Cliffe recommendation from a few years back.

SB: yeah, high-priced products like Good Genes have their merits, particularly for people who use them in conjunction with full faces of makeup, but since my only goal is not looking like a person whose skin never got the message that puberty is long since over, the elegance of a product’s formulation is not a big priority for me. Give me effective products at reasonable prices and I’m a happy camper. At this point in my life, I’m way more likely to go for a high-quality sunscreen, but even these are available at reasonable price points – my three favorites for the ol’ face are from Purito, Isntree, and Etude House. I consider good sunscreen use as following in one of the family businesses, historic preservation (shout-out to my retired historic preservationist Dad, who is enjoying his second career as a wildly talented printmaker, and who has infuriatingly clear skin, which I very graciously do not begrudge).

DK: I splashed out for Good Genes once and it didn’t do much for me! I get the same results from cheaper stuff! One inexpensive thing I love that does actually give good, albeit temporary results are the delightfully named Frownies. They recently updated their packaging and they have a distinctly less “my grandma’s boudoir vanity” look to them, which is a minus in my book, but these things happen. They are craft paper with some sort of adhesive on the back that you wet and stick to wrinkles you want smoothed out. My “elevens,” which is what idiots call the vertical lines that develop between the eyebrows if you dare wrinkle your forehead in consternation, which, WHO AMONG US AT THIS POINT, AMIRITE, are my one wrinkle that really bother me, as they make me look crankier than I already am. Frownies will actually smooth them out for a good day if you wear one overnight. I don’t know what happens if you wear one every day because I can’t be bothered and also I like to have sex at night occasionally and call me a prude if you like but I can’t do so with a piece of craft paper stuck to my forehead. Some people get Botox for “elevens”--if anyone wants to weigh in with their experience in this arena, please do! 

DS: I get Botox for my chronic migraines, one side effect of which is that my forehead is scarcely wrinkled at all. It occasionally throws people for a loop when I tell them how old I am because they’re expecting to see various furrows and other proof of my lifetime of emotions. I find I smize a lot more and generally make (even more than usual) dramatic faces with my eyes to compensate.  

DK: Well, there you go! 

DS: [sings off key but with enthusiasm] Again on my own!! (That damn Whitesnake song has been on heavy rotation for several weeks on two of the Oldies For Xers radio stations I like, and I’m powerless to resist!)

DK: David Coverdale probably has an OUTRAGEOUS skin care routine!

DS: Oooh, probably! I would absolutely read many thousands of words of an oral history of fellows of glam rock talking about their skincare routines. Diamond Dave? Tommy Lee? Duff McKagan?! Nikki Six?! SLASH, himself! (I also want to know about Slash’s haircare routine.)

DK: Get in touch, fellas!