Somewhere along the way we decided that skin lives in the bathroom.
If it's dry:
buy a cream.
If it's red:
buy a serum.
If it's breaking out:
buy an acid.
If it's aging:
buy something much more expensive in a much smaller bottle.
And I obviously own a skincare company, so I appreciate the jar of cream.
But I think we give it way too much responsibility.
Skin is not wallpaper
It is living tissue.
It has blood flow.
Nerves.
Immune cells.
A microbiome.
A circadian rhythm.
It responds to hormones.
Temperature.
Humidity.
Light.
Sleep.
Food.
Stress.
Movement.
Everything you do to the organism eventually reaches the skin because the skin is part of the organism.
This seems ridiculously obvious when you say it out loud.
And yet the skincare industry has somehow isolated the face from the human attached to it.
We talk about skin as though the problem is sitting on top of it
Dry skin?
Add hydration.
Inflamed skin?
Add a calming ingredient.
Dull skin?
Exfoliate something.
And sometimes that's useful.
Sometimes you really do just need a better moisturizer.
But sometimes the skin is responding to something much larger and we're standing in front of the mirror trying to out-serum it.
Pregnancy made this obvious to me
Stretch marks are a perfect example.
Almost the entire conversation is:
What are you putting on your belly?
As though skin expanding rapidly over months is primarily a lotion problem.
Of course I think growing skin benefits from being moisturized.
I made my first tallow concoction because I was pregnant and wanted something for my belly.
But skin also has to be built.
Protein.
Minerals.
Blood flow.
Hydration.
Sleep.
Light.
The tissue has to come from somewhere.
The cream does not build the dermis.
Same thing with winter skin
So you buy a stronger cream.
Fine.
But meanwhile:
the furnace is running
the air is dry
you haven't seen humidity in four months
you're taking 20-minute hot showers
you're barely outside
the wind is trying to remove your epidermis
Maybe the moisturizer didn't suddenly become defective.
The environment changed.
Or acne
You can absolutely have a topical trigger.
You can react to a product.
You can clog your pores.
But acne also exists inside a hormonal, inflammatory and metabolic environment.
Same skin.
Same person.
Same system.
The bathroom is one variable.
I think this is partly why skincare gets so complicated
Because when the jar doesn't fix the entire organism, we assume we need another jar.
Cleanser.
Toner.
Essence.
Serum.
Active.
Second active.
Eye cream.
Face cream.
Oil.
Mask.
And then when the skin finally gets irritated from eight simultaneous experiments?
Barrier repair serum.
It's objectively funny.
My version of skincare has gotten much smaller
I care more now about:
sleeping well
getting outside
morning light
eating enough protein
minerals
circulation
seasonality
not stripping the hell out of my skin
And then I want the skincare itself to be almost boring.
Clean it when it needs cleaning.
Moisturize it when it's dry.
Protect it from the environment when it needs protection.
Done.
This doesn't mean skincare doesn't matter
This is where I think people swing too far the other way.
You don't get bonus biology points for walking around with painfully dry skin because you've decided everything should be fixed “from within.”
Skin is exposed to the external environment.
Topicals are uniquely useful precisely because you can put something directly onto the external tissue.
If your skin feels tight?
Put cream on it.
If your hands are cracking from washing?
Use something rich.
If your pregnant belly is dry and itchy?
Moisturize it.
That's not superficial.
It's responding to the actual problem in front of you.
I just want the jar to have a reasonable job description
I don't want my moisturizer responsible for:
my hormones
my diet
my sleep
my circadian rhythm
my stress
my indoor humidity
my protein intake
my entire aging process
That's insane.
Its job is much smaller.
Keep my skin:
comfortable
soft
supple
protected
while I handle the rest of the variables elsewhere.
That is enough responsibility for one jar.
And weirdly, once I stopped asking skincare to do everything, I liked skincare a lot more.