a semi-unhinged intervention for anyone whose face currently feels like a chip bag
A quick note from me: I really appreciate you checking out my blog! Just so you know, some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means that if you buy something through them, I might earn a little bit of money, at no extra cost to you. There’s absolutely no pressure to buy anything, but if you do, it genuinely helps support the time and love I put into writing these posts.
Okay so. The cleansing thing. Round two, because apparently I didn’t say it mean enough the first time.
Here’s the moment I actually want you to sit in for a second, you wash your face, you towel off, and there’s that tight pulling feeling like your skin got shrink-wrapped. And you smile. You actually smile at the mirror like good, it’s working. That’s the whole crime scene right there. That tightness isn’t your skin thanking you, it’s your skin filing a complaint, and we’ve all been mistranslating the complaint as a compliment for like a decade straight.
I don’t know when we collectively decided that “clean” has to hurt a little to count. Like it’s a workout. No pain no glow, sure, whatever, except your face isn’t a hamstring, it doesn’t need to be broken down to improve, it’s not that kind of tissue, and yet here we all are, foaming twice, scrubbing in circles like we’re trying to remove a stain and not, you know, oil that our body makes on purpose, for a reason, that we then spend money fighting.
Anyway. If your skin is shiny by 2pm and also somehow flaky at the same time, which, congrats, that’s not two problems, that’s one problem wearing a trench coat, it’s probably not your moisturizer’s fault. It’s the cleanser panic-stripping everything in the morning and your face going into full defense mode by lunch, cranking out oil like it’s trying to patch a hole in a boat. You did that. I did that. We all did that, together, for years, while blaming genetics.
So here’s what I actually changed, and I’m only telling you because it’s boring, and boring is apparently the whole unlock nobody wants to hear.
CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser. The tub, the pump, twelve dollars, doesn’t foam, doesn’t do anything dramatic, and that’s exactly the problem I had with it at first, I genuinely thought it was broken. Like I stood there rubbing this milky nothing-texture onto my face waiting for the squeak and it never came and some small unhinged part of my brain went “this isn’t working” while the rational part went “…that’s the point, genius.” Anyway it’s an Amazon best seller for a reason and the reason is it doesn’t attack you.
Then the Banila Co Clean It Zero balm, which, okay, full disclosure, I resisted this one specifically because it comes in a jar and something about scooping product with your fingers felt like a whole extra chore I didn’t sign up for. Turns out melting off sunscreen and makeup before the actual wash is not extra, it’s just… doing the job in two steps instead of one aggressive step, which, when you say it out loud, is obviously less work, not more. I don’t know why it took me so long to do the math.
And then the small dumb one, reusable bamboo cotton rounds, like fifteen bucks on Amazon for a set. I used disposable pads for literally my whole life without questioning it once, and switching made me realize the old ones were basically tiny sandpaper the entire time and I just… accepted that. The way you accept a lot of low-grade discomfort until one day you don’t have to anymore and you’re like wait, why did I live like that.
None of this is a glow up story. Nothing dramatic happened. My skin didn’t transform, I didn’t cry in a Sephora, there’s no before and after. It just stopped hurting a little, quietly, and I stopped noticing my own face, which, turns out, is actually the goal the whole time. You’re not supposed to think about your skin. If you’re thinking about it, something’s wrong.
Okay your turn, tell me you’ve also stood there enjoying the tight stripped feeling like it meant something. I need to know I’m not the only one who confused pain with progress for a decade.
If this is your kind of chaos, come read Love, Unlearned, same exact delusion, just about relationships instead of skin. We do this to everything, apparently.
Subscribe on Medium and Substack
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I may earn from qualifying purchases, but this does not affect my recommendations. I only suggest products I’ve personally vetted.
Leave a comment