Look at her face. Also, this is Mallory and Sansa saying goodbye to each other. Or, Mallory is saying goodbye, while Sansa maintains a stony air of indifference, due to her outrage and loss:
We’d been a partnership, we agreed, however crotchety. A friendship was born.
And that was lucky for me, because Alan had a great gift for friendship. He was devoted to a large number of people and would somehow always manage to visit their obscure art exhibition, or phone them at 2am when he heard they were in deep trouble, or attend their opening night even when, as we now know, he was already seriously ill. He threw dinners; he ordered every dessert on the menu if you couldn’t decide.
Ann Friedman’s Feminist Resolutions for 2016:
Channel one ounce of Sean Penn’s egotism. There is so much to be learned from the actor’s foray into geopolitically contentious journalism. Next time you find yourself claiming that you can’t try something new because you’d be terrible at it, read Penn’s Rolling Stone interview with Mexican drug lord El Chapo and remind yourself to let your ego soar like an owl that flies among falcons. Feminist bonus points for gratuitously mentioning your genitals in your recounting of the experience.
D’Arcy James: “When I left the show I wanted to do something special, so I created a ritual, which I hope will continue through the length of this production, and any other production that occurs. It’s called the Order of Garter, and it’s done if there’s a new king that comes into the show. As Hamilton fans will note, all kings wore garters around their calves, and it was the order of their familial lines. I wrote up this sketch where all of the characters named George in the show would come in and be present for the ascension of the new king and the passing of the garter. It’s all set to a song called ‘Electric Bird’ by Sia. You have to do it like a groom placing a garter on a bride’s thigh. Chris Jackson came up with this — he said, ‘You should be King George the Third the First, and Jonathan will be King George the Third the Second, and it will go on and on.’ We did it with Jonathan, and then to my great, great happiness, they did it when Jonathan left, and Andrew took over. It’s awesome! It’s another way of saying, ‘I was here.’”
I would 100% want Bill Bryson to wrap me in a big hug if I ever met him (I like his Australia book best, personally):
Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite?
I suppose that would have to be “A Walk in the Woods,” my account of a profoundly hopeless attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail in the company of an equally hopeless companion named (pseudonymously) Stephen Katz. The Appalachian Trail is physically very grueling, but it is also awfully hard to write about. Walking, even when it is going well, is an intensely repetitive experience. The whole time we were out there, I kept thinking: “All we are doing is walking every day. I don’t know how I am ever going to get a book out of this.” So the fact that it did eventually result in a book is to me a kind of permanent miracle.
Whom would you want to write your life story?
My wife. She is kind, and she was there.
Squirrel-related power outages:
The phenomenon of squirrel attacks is a great illustration of how our perception of risk tends to be skewed away from mundane frequent things toward big, scary improbable things. Plenty of ink gets spilled on the alleged vulnerability of our power grid to cyber attacks. But as none other then the Brookings Institution has noted, “squirrels have taken down the power grid more times than the zero times that hackers have.” You could say the same about Hannah Montana balloons, for that matter.
RIP C.D. Wright (Michael Robbins shared this poem of hers on Facebook yesterday, and it’s so fitting for everything this week):
only the crossing counts
It’s not how we leave one’s life. How go off
the air. You never know do you. You think you’re ready
for anything; then it happens, and you’re not. You’re really
not. The genesis of an ending, nothing
but a feeling, a slow movement, the dusting
of furniture with a remnant of the revenant’s shirt.
Seeing the candles sink in their sockets; we turn
away, yet the music never quits. The fire kisses our face.
O phthsis, o lotharian dead eye, no longer
will you gaze on the baize of the billiard table. No more
shooting butter dishes out of the sky. Scattering light.
Between snatches of poetry and penitence you left
the brumal wood of men and women. Snow drove
the butterflies home. You must know
how it goes, known all along what to expect,
sooner or later … the faded cadence of anonymity.
Frankly, my dear, frankly, my dear, frankly
This is the story of how Glenn Milstead, a big-haired, poo-eating Charm City drag queen named Divine, came to inspire a Disney villainess.
That an indelible character in a children’s cartoon is a composite of 1980s gay life, bold women with gravelly voices, the AIDS crisis, independent film, Hollywood, Baltimore, and the tragic premature deaths of two exceptionally creative men shouldn’t surprise us. The best characters originate in artists’ complicated lives. And Ursula was surely one of the best.
A disturbing and fascinating history of how the Klan got their stupid white outfits:
While some early Klansmen did wear white, and later Klan mythology would claim they’d dressed up as Confederate ghosts, they usually drew on folk traditions of carnival, circus, minstrelsy, Mardi Gras—or the mid-century “Calico Indians,” hooded and masked farmers rebelling against upstate New York land laws. Klansmen wore gigantic animal horns, fake beards, coon-skin caps, or polka-dotted paper hats; they imitated French accents or barnyard animals; they played guitars to serenade victims. Some Klansmen wore pointed hats suggestive of wizards, dunces, or Pierrots; some wore everyday winter hoods, pillowcases, or flour sacks on their heads. Many early Klansman also wore blackface, simultaneously scapegoating and mocking their victims.
NO ONE GETS UP MY ASS IN MY OWN KITCHEN FIRST THING IN THE MORNING AND ALSO THIS IS ON YOUR WEAK HUSBAND:
Dear Prudence,
My husband and I have custody of his three young children, and we also have a 10-month-old girl. Thanks to a healthy divorce settlement, my husband’s ex does not work. The problem is she lives close by and often comes over in the morning to see the kids off to school. She gets in the way as I make breakfast, get the children dressed, and answer calls (I run a business from my home). She helps herself to coffee and makes comments like, “You’re so down-to-earth, living without a hairdresser. I couldn’t do it.” Last week she dropped by on her way to yoga and asked if her new Prada bag was accidentally shipped to my house. She then laughed as my daughter violently dislodged her breakfast all over me. I am so angry about her passive-aggressive tactics. My husband divorced her because of her lying, cheating, and meanness, but he tells me to accept the fact that his kids’ mom will always be around. And I do accept that! But I’m down to my last nerve with her condescending visits. Am I being unreasonable?
One of our beloved commenters is seeking our good vibes, prayers, and (ideally) money for her dad, who has post-polio syndrome and is getting absolutely buried by the cost of in-home care. You can donate here, and he’ll be in all of our thoughts.
Friend of The Toast Ruby Lang has a new romance e-book out! It is a pen name, so we will keep her true identity SECRET. (It is not me.)
Watching the Crossfit Games is one of my very favourite things to do (I do not do Crossfit bc I personally think doing Olympic weightlifting moves in a timed competitive environment is bad for my ability to be an injury-free jock for the next fifty years of my life, but I think it’s LOADS of fun and I genuinely enjoy and appreciate it), and Steve and I were just watching the international championships where the top two men and the top two women from the US, Canada, “Europe,” and “The Pacific” do their thing, and it was A FUCKING JOY. My man, Lucas Parker, being a literal Gimli:
My woman, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet:
RIP to René Angélil, Celine Dion’s husband (Celine is very important to me culturally and spiritually.) They had a SKETCHY beginning to their relationship (but if Celine says she didn’t begin to have Sexual Feelings for him until she was 17-18, I believe her, Celine is VERY TRUTHFUL), but they certainly seem to have been madly in love with each other for many, many decades, and I am sorry for her loss.
So, in a fit of Drynuary impulse purchasing, and due to my EXTREME fondness for ritualistic systems of all kinds instead of moderation, I recently purchased the stuff needed to follow a multi-multi-step K-beauty routine, it’s mostly “wash your face twice and use Essences,” off of (mostly) Sokoglam.com (I will now do anything Charlotte tells me to) and generally adhering to their suggestions for order and product brands, and a) of all, I usually don’t even wash my face except for in the shower after the gym, so this is a CHANGE, and b) why would I spend all kinds of money on something this unnecessary, and c) I FUCKING LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT, LOOK HOW RADIANT MY SKIN LOOKS NOW:
I never wear makeup, but I discovered (VIA A LUCKY-ASS GUESS and some pictures of smears on strangers’ wrists) that my skin is the exact right tone to use a Sulwhasoo Perfecting Cushion in #13, and now I am collaring total strangers to ask them if I’m pretty. Tell me I’m pretty.
Anyway, just wanted to share this dorky thing I’m doing. Please tell me about your favourite products, regardless of which country they hail from. Half of mine are now composed of snail secretions, which is gross-sounding, but think about how well-hydrated snails are! I have everything lined up in order on my counter and I honestly feel like a glamorous movie star now.
The only facial skin care I do is putting on night cream after I shower in the winter because otherwise my face feel tight… but I clearly need to do more because I woke up WITH ECZEMA ON MY FACE. I’m not a vain person (I wear make-up occasionally, but don’t bother most days) but this is making me feel like an honest to god Troll. Maybe I should just go take up residence under a bridge somewhere.
(your skin looks lovely Nicole)
Thank you! And again, my skin has always been perfectly nice on literally no maintenance, so I am sure you look fabulous and carefree, like old modeling pics of Lauren Hutton.
I WANT YOUR CHEEKBONES (and jawline, thank you very much!) and holy moly, great skin! Pro tip: when you get to A Certain Age, head to your doctor and get prescribed a Retin-A product. It will slough that tired skin right off and it’s FAR cheaper than any store/designer brand of beauty cream.
chiming on RETIN-A RETIN-A RETIN-A. It’s the shit, it works, and it’s incredibly inexpensive. Just be sure to use something really hydrating after (I use argan oil- the $13/vial kind from Whole Foods) and wear sunscreen.
I really need to get on that curology.com account and get Retin-A. I’ve had acne since before puberty and as I get older it just looks worse. (On the upside I’m pretty sure it’s why I’m still being mistaken for younger than my age at 36, so there’s that.)
Be careful of strength, it can be pretty strong stuff! Background: late 40’s, still get occasional hormonal acne on chin, dry skin (had acne in teenage years that required tetracycline). My first prescribed Retin-A cream was .025 and I slathered it on the first night; the next morning, my face looked like it undergone a chemical peel. Whoops! I now use a .05 and it works perfectly for my face: it gets rid of the acne and doesn’t destroy my skin in the process!
RETIN A! I have had acne my whole teen/adult life and Retin A has very much improved my skin. I don’t theeeeeeenk I look much younger (maybe 30…. instead of 32), but i feel like the tone if my skin looks healthier. I don’t wear make-up so what’s happening on my face is just totally UP FRONT to the world, ya know?
My issue now is the sun damage from working outside for seven years. I wore sunscreen and hats religiously but all for naught. I’m applying lightening cream but I don’t really see a difference…..
I consistently wore sunscreen and got sun damage from working outside (6 years! Ski lift operator!), too. Really notice it on my décolletage, boooooo!
So sorry to hear that. I’ve had my struggles with eczema, but the face sounds like a whole new (itchy) level. Do you have a humidifier? I find that it’s a lifesaver during the dry winter months.
Seconded. Without a humidifier, I break out terribly and then my lips peel off my face. Just spring something on the quieter side if you are a light sleeper.
My dermatologist gave me a prescription steroid cream specifically for eczema on my face, and it worked okay. But here are the two things that have helped my skin the most overall:
1. Applying Aveeno Eczema Therapy Moisturizing Cream to tight and/or itchy patches of skin right after a shower. (The whole ‘colloidal oatmeal’ stuff sounds like bullshit, but I swear it works better than cortisone cream.)
2. Wearing gloves when washing the dishes.
Gah, face eczema! I fight eczema every winter, as soon as the air goes cold and dry, and for the past two years I’ve had a kind of…pre-eczema?…around my temples, no scaly patches but that just-under-the-skin manic itching that signals an outbreak. I’ve been rubbing in dabs of tamanu oil and it has helped a LOT.
I’m used to eczema, I just tend to get it on my hands (and very occasionally my feet, which is itchily annoying enough). Oddly enough, my hands have been clear for ages now, so I wasn’t expecting it to pop up, least of all in a new location.
I have this face mask that is mostly some sort of clay and purports to contain dead sea salt that I use maybe 1-2 times a week, depending on how gross my skin feels. I’m not sure if it actually does anything, but it makes my face feel all smooth and clean afterwards, and it was $3 at CVS, so.
Facial eczema is THE WORST. I got it for the first time last year and I wanted to peel my lips and eyelids off. Cetaphil is great, and I ordered a humidifier based on recommendations in this thread. Just wanted to add that some people get this from allergies, aka dermatitis. An allergist can diagnose this and allergy shots can be a useful option for some people.
Nearly every summer when we go away on vacation I pack an old copy of “Anna Karenina,” and every year I manage to move the bookmark about 20 pages along before it is time to go home. I have long since lost track of who most of the characters are or what their relationships are with one another. I can’t pretend that any of them have ever interested me. At the rate I am going, I estimate that I will need approximately 74 more vacations to finish the book.
SAME BILL, SAME
I adore Bill Bryson’s books and he is one of the very few authors I will instantly pay whatever amount of money for a new book. I’m reading the new one now and it is (unsurprisingly) an utter delight. There’s already been quite a long diversion to discuss people who had been killed by cows that made me instantly want to move to Britain.
And yes, “In a Sunburned Country” is 100% his best book. I’ve read it approximately 90 times and the bit where he gets chased by dogs still makes me laugh hysterically.
Yes, I unabashedly adore his books and I also think he’s been such a huge unconscious influence on my own writing that I would probably weep copiously if I ever met him. My favorite is probably At Home, which I’ve reread a dozen times or so, but his memoir is a close second and his Australia book a very close third. Also One Summer was great. And his audiobook are AWESOME.
Oh God, I think I would be completely incapable of speech if I met him. I have to tie “A Short History of Nearly Everything” with the Australia book because I read my first copy to pieces and bought myself the illustrated edition to go alongside my tattered copy. And his books on the English language!!!! SO GREAT.
I LOVE The Mother Tongue. I love his writing so, so much. I am so glad so many Toasties also like him because other than my dad, my sister, and my friend who moved away (sob), I don’t know anyone who even knows who he is.
Is pro-Bryson an Official Toast Stance? We at least agree he won’t be shot into the sun with the rest of the men, right? Though I’d like to read his account of the journey.
I think we have to at least agree to that much, right? Though like you I think he could make an interesting book out of it.
He’d file an essay so charming and good-spirited that, when we fire Franzen into the sun, we’d send him with a note saying “Send Bryson back.”
The Mother Tongue is one of my all-time favorite books! It was one of the first things that indicated to me that I wanted to work in editing. I’ve read it so many times.
In my first library job I used to hide in the stacks while shelving and read Mother Tongue in five-minute bites. It took me months, but it was all the more precious for that
He graduated from the same high school I did and I am SO PISSED that we never got him to come speak as a notable alumnus. Cloris Leachman did come for an assembly, though, and as I recall she was lovely.
I found the illustrated edition of At Home on clearance once. JOYFUL.
A long, long time ago, I was doing my senior (HS) portraits & being the utter geek that I am, demanded to have one shot of myself on a bench clutching Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. That picture ended up being the one I chose as my picture in the school yearbook & to this day I’m still proud. Geek to the Max!
THAT BEING SAID, I will admit that the first Bryson books I read as a tween remain my utter all-time favourites: “Notes From a Small Country” & “A Walk in the Woods” (I nearly peed myself laughing somewhere in chapter 3 & didn’t stop until the end the first time I read it)
I met him at a book signing for The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid in college and I suggested he go back to Philly so he could appreciate it properly (he disses it in The Lost Continent), and he kindly/justly replied that he had been there many times and actually really liked the city. (Only my love of Philly could make me quarrel with Bill Bryson.) He definitely shaped my sense of humor and writing style, and I think his hilarious travel writing is part of why I love bizarre, seemingly mundane discoveries/places when I travel so much.
(Oh man, now I’m worried that he’s going to die, too! Stay healthy, Bill Bryson!)
I tried to watch the Keira Knightley Anna Karenina the other day; I did not get it. The story was way to slow and then the *artistic* nature of the film just made it weird.
I rewatched the Keira Knightly Pride & Prejudice this week, and it may be the palate cleanser you deserve.
Due to technical difficulties transferring books onto my Kindle last year I had to resort to reading Anna Karenina because it was the only thing left and I had stupidly put it on there because it was free. IT IS THE LONGEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT THE MOST BORING AND TERRIBLE PEOPLE. The only way to salvage it would be to make Kitty the main character and have her go around Russia hitting men over the head with a frying pan and then going home to her wife Anna, who is doing very well on her mood stabilizers.
I did get to the point where Anna throws herself into the train, and had been under the impression that was when the book would end, since you know – the character the book is named after is gone. It didn’t. There were many more pages of vaguely preachy exposition on Russia and Lenin’s soul. WHY!?
Would totally be able to finish your suggested version though!
Yeah apparently Levin was secretly the main character the whole time? Compared to all of the other men in the book he was ok but can you imagine being forced to have a conversation with him? I would die. Poor Kitty.
SO MANY PAGES ABOUT COWS. That’s literally all I remember about the book. I did love the Kiera Knightley movie though. It even made Levin seem tolerable.
I’ve been meaning to watch it because of my love of Keira but then again I have only just now managed to forget that Vronsky exists and I don’t want to undo this good work.
whaaaaaat does it not end then? glory be. (i’ve never got more than 50-odd pages in, about four times)
Bill Bryson’s Australia book (which I know as Down Under because I unknowingly bought a UK copy in a used bookstore [in the US]) is the funniest thing I have ever read.
[General AK spoilers throughout]
My mom spoilered Anna Karenina for me when I was but sixteen years old; she said when she read it (at sixteen) she was so excited to get to the end to figure out how in the world Anna was gonna solve these huge-ass problems and then was SHOCKED AND SADDENED that Anna (and Tolstoy, in her opinion; but mostly Anna) “took the easy way out.” (My mom, to me: “But the parts about harvesting wheat are really grand.”)
So I read it as a surly teen and I was so angry at Anna, not for killing herself, but for getting together with Vronksy in the first place. Told everyone afterward I MUCH preferred Dostoevsky to Tolstoy.
Grew up, made a few bad relationship decisions of my own, re-read AK in my mid-thirties and it was, my dears, a REVELATION. I could not believe the insight good old Leo (always, forever Leo to me, after this reading) had into the horrifying STASIS of Anna’s life and the utter, uncompromising lack of any other option aside from her final choice. Called my mother immediately upon finishing, said “You are a grown-up now, you have to re-read this thing.” To my knowledge, she still hasn’t and that was years ago.
The parts about harvesting wheat, though, remain really grand.
I’m fascinated by novels where you really have to be a certain age for them to land perfectly – not just novels that hit you early, but books where, if you read them at the wrong point in your life, you will probably not enjoy them. “Catcher in the Rye” is sort of my prototypical example of this (I read it too late and I couldn’t hate Holden Caulfield more if you paid me to do so), but it sounds like I should wait a few years and reread some of the Russians and see if I have a little more sympathy for them.
I found The Great Gatsby to be one of these — I hated it in high school, but when I had it assigned again in college I approached it with dread and then was shocked to find it genuinely great. I don’t think it lands for a lot of high-school kids, which is a shame since that’s who we generally force to read it.
I read Anna Karenina during a long, cold, dark winter when I was in my early 30s and it landed perfectly for me.
Bryson’s first mistake is trying to read a Russian novel during summer, bah.
Yeah, anytime the weather says “Feel happy”, you shouldn’t be reading a Russian author. I don’t even like most of the big Russian doorstoppers, but even I know that.
ME TOO. To this day I insist that my wife’s problem with Catcher is that she read it when she was OLDER than Holden C.
Same wife has also never seen The Goonies and I basically won’t let her* watch it because I’m afraid she, a grown-up person, would hate it (let’s face it; it’s nothing actually-special) and then a tiny piece of my childhood would break.
*In a nice way, you all know what I mean.
My bookclub read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” last year, and as far as any of us could figure, that must be one of those books you need to read as a teenager to get. As an adult it is so overblown it’s almost funny.
I read it as a a teenager and thought it was awful. I think you need to be a young and perhaps not very introspective teenager?
This is how The Awakening was for me. I had to read it in high school and hated it, then I had to read it again for THREE DIFFERENT CLASSES in college but by then I kind of loved it.
My friend and I read Anna Karenina last year, both of us around 30 years old and we both loved it so, so much. It truly is horrifying to see the lack of options for Anna, and how even as you feel for her you also want to shake her a little, too. (And some of the other characters are delightful in their own irritating little ways.)
I read Wuthering Heights as an adult woman and could NOT figure out why anyone ever liked it at all.
Several of my lady friends said that my problem is that I didn’t read it as a teenager.
I read Wuthering Heights as a teenager. Or rather, I started it. I was too pissed at Catherine to finish it; Heathcliff is a DOUCHE.
I need to read the Australia one again. My current fave is the UK one, mainly because his family lived where my gentleman caller is from, and he spent a long time living where I do, so an awful lot of it is very familiar and makes me smile.
Oh Sunburnt Country is my favorite too, but I think the best scene is the one in the tourism center where he and the other guy are hiding all the bags of useless pamphlets. “Place them just here,” we said in unison.
YES the whole time he spends in Canberra is an utter delight. When he gets drunk alone in the bar and doodles weird things on the napkins!!!
The salmon!!!
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They’re all great. I can’t chose a favorite, but I adored “One Summer: America, 1927.”
I think A Walk in the Woods is maybe the only Bryson book that I didn’t like, mostly because Bryson is occasionally ungenerous in his assessment of other people.
Yeeeeah. Also, I’ve wondered if he’s ever gone back and edited the one he wrote about driving around the rural USA, because he refers to someone he knew as a child as a “mincing faggot.” It seemed so out of character that my jaw dropped.
I haven’t read his Australia one, but I’ve read most of his other stuff. And my fave by far (that I’ve reread multiple times) is At Home, so imagine my UTTER DELIGHT when I found an edition filled with color photos on clearance at my fave bookstore!
Summary of all the shitty things that happened in the first two weeks of 2016 : http://scroll.in/article/801844/go-away-already-2…
My friend made a playlist of Alan Rickman reading poetry and excerpts from novels and plays for our road trip, and we had to park at a McDonalds for a while because we couldn’t stop crying
Its cliche, but coconut oil has literally changed my life.
I’m a very lax face washer (in the shower only, and never with product. If I have make up on, which is rare, I’ll sort of wash my face and then get the rest off with a towel.), but I have heard rumors that its a super old school beauty thing to never wash your face and only use oil. THATS MY THEORY AND I’M STICKING TO IT.
I also feel like my skin tone has become much more even since I stopped wearing make up regularly (like at least 4 years ago), buts its probably more that I just stopped listening to the patriarchal bullshit that tells me my skin tone is bad. (I do get stupidly red faced though)
Yeah! I stopped covering my “dark under eye circles” on days when I wear makeup because I read something by Jane Marie, I think, where she said something along the lines of: Why bother. Dark circles are sexy as hell. I’ve stopped noticing/stopped caring and my life is much improved.
What I do care about is how much secret glitter I can wear and how to best paint my nails so they look like deep space.
I actually do find dark circles attractive (when I notice them at all).
Deep space nails sounds like a very worthy goal
I must admit I do have a bit of a thing for guys with that kind of brown/dark circles around the eyes; back in my emo days I used to try to recreate it with make up before I realized it was actually a product of heavy drinking in the guys I fancied and not guy-liner like I had assumed.
I do still wear a bit of eyeliner if I have time in the morning, but I refuse to give make up any time in my morning routine, so I only do it if I’m running early or I get a seat on the train. I haven’t worn any make up at all this week and I dgaf.
Wait, wait, is it the drinking that does it? Is that why my circles won’t go away even though I’m actively forcing more sleep into my life? I always thought it was the only-7-hours!
I dunno, I think its the cumulative effect of a rock star lifestyle. I imagine there’s also kack of sleep with the drinking
It might be allergies! If you have nasal congestion/eye itching allergies, dark eye circles can be a lesser known symptom. Mine are permanent, unless someone fixes my immune system.
I do in fact have allergies, so this could very well be it. I had no idea that was possible–thank you for telling me!
The French share your theory. They apparently do not believe in using water to wash and only use micellar cleansers. And I think it was customary in the past for ladies to remove makeup by cold creaming their faces, then wiping it off with a cloth or tissue.
That is how my mom removes her makeup, with cold cream, and her skin is intensely soft for a woman in her 60s.
That’s the dream!
Ah vindication! I’m well sophisticated.
I wonder what the science behind it is, if there is any? I definitely think we in The West over rely on abrasive products to ‘clean’ ourselves; my instinct says that if you have relatively healthy skin (acne is a whole different ball game that I have thankfully never had to deal with), over-exfoliation is only going to cause damage? And by over-exfoliation I mean almost any. I’m already getting wrinkles, I don’t need to do deliberate damage to my skin! (I will however happily squeeze spots to my hearts content, scars be damned!)
Oh good lord, that would not work for me and my grease-face.
But then, neither coconut oil nor cold cream is recommended for people with acne. They’re just break-out city.
Yes! I have tried to get into using various facial washes over the years because I was convinced it was the Proper Thing To Do, but inevitably they’d make me have the worst acne breakout of my life or dry my nose out so much it peels. I gave up a while ago and just scrub my face with a wet washcloth when I’m in the shower, and if I’m feeling dry afterwards put on a bit of coconut or jojoba oil or something.
I have the most ridic sensitive skin on my face, so I gave up on pretty much any kind of facial wash; I discovered this as a teenager because I thought I’d be super diligent about cleansing/toner after makeup, so I bought all the stuff and cleansing wipes and everything. It took about three nights of going to bed with my face bright red and boiling hot to figure out the connection and I’ve never used any sort of cleansing wipes or toner again.
Luckily it only seems to be cleaning/toning type products (Do people still use toner, is that a thing? I feel like modern technology should have developed something that moisturizes and tones at the same time by now?), make up and moisturizers are usually fine
I react badly to cleansers with Sulfates in them (so, most cleansers) and have switched to a microfiber towel and warm water. I use coconut oil to break down eye makeup and the warm damp towel to remove it and clean my face. My skin has never been clearer.
I am all about oil cleansing.
Its just so much cheaper! What kind of oil do you use?
I use coconut oil for everything (cleansing, face and body moisturizer) , and now any kind of cream feels too thick and tacky. Plus its £6 for a jar of oil that last 6 months, versus £10-20 for a tiny pot of cream that lasts about a week (TBH, even when i did use cream, I just used coca butter for everything. I’m a total cheapstake, come at me.)
My K-beauty routine includes rice oil-infused wipes and then a gentle foam made with egg whites and I do not feel stripped at all.
Your life sounds amazing.
How tiny are these pots of cream? I’ve been working on the same night cream since August and it’s just now hit the halfway mark. It’s 100 ml though which I guess is pretty generous.
I really like rosehip seed oil for its cheapness and effects but it takes a long time to sink in and I’m not the kind of person who has the foresight to moisturize well before bedtime so that she doesn’t coat her pillowcase in oil, so that didn’t work out very well for me.
I dunno, like 50ml? Honestly I could never bring myself to buy them (I was poooorr), so the only times I had proper face cream was if it was super reduced or a gift. That’s why I ended up with cocoa butter in the first place, I despise my face feeling dry but couldn’t afford the fancy moisturizers!
I don’t know if I do it different, but I’ve never really noticed the oil getting anywhere, and I usually put some on just before bed. In the mornings I do look a bit ‘dewey’ for about 10 minutes, but that’s like a sought after look anyway, right?
I switched to DHC’s deep cleansing oil and never looked back. Definitely all about the oil cleansing.
oil is the best!!! I use jojoba oil b/c coconut oil makes me break out (altho I do put it in my hair to deal with dry ends during the winter). I never used moisturizer before and just had gross flaky dry-oily skin because every single moisturizer would make me break out, but jojoba oil makes my face glowy and soft with zero breakouts. I also wash my face… with raw honey…. which may sound like a bit of a waste of honey but honest to god my skin has never looked better in my entire life. Honey as a spot treatment for pimples works really well too!
I hadn’t thought of honey (I cannot bare to waste honey, soz.), but I do have a spot corrector (La Roche Posay, its awesome) that I used when I do occasionally get spots.
I can’t quite do the oil in hair, it just makes it so greasy, but I do use it as a hair mask occasionally before a shower!
Does Jojoba have a smell? I love coconut because its almost completely smell-free; Oils are a bit different anyway, but I cannot stand scented lotions
nope! It’s totally odorless, and I’m with you on scented lotions/heavily scented anything that goes on my body. It all just gives me a huge headache, and it’s always a bummer when something I want to try is just overwhelmingly fragrant. I feel like I can almost taste the chemicals? Blech.
Yes! Tasting it! I take it as a good sign that I’m like super in touch with my body (blegh. I’m not as hippie as I sound), but it does mean I can’t wear sunscreen, which makes me feel guilty. I can only use that Nivea invisible spray one, I think its alcohol based, but it doesn’t cling on the skin the same way and I don’t taste it in the back of my throat, plus coconut oil is like 4SPF so I’m good day to day (this is my delusion and my wrinkly face will probably prove me wrong in 10 years)
hahaha I’ve fallen down the hippie crunchy rabbit hole just because I really can’t stand a lot of non “natural” products because of fragrances. Actual super natural sunscreen is expensive af, but if you have a trader joe’s near you, their sunscreen (the lotion one, not the spray one) is the least odor-y I’ve found that’s not like $20 for 10oz. But also I am bad and never wear sunscreen and will be a gross raisin soon ooooh wellllll
There’s a company called All Terrain that makes several truly waterproof and unsmelly sunblocks with high SPF. They’re really nice for sensitive and/or zit-ridden skin, they’re so soothing, but they’re also so waterproof that they’re hard to get off and your sweat beads up.
Raw honey is such a great cleanser! I use it as a mask sometimes too.
Yess. I’ve used honey/yogurt facial masks in the past and my skin is SO SOFT AND DEWEY afterwards, it’s glorious. And as a bonus I can eat any leftovers and it’s delicious.
How do you make your honey masks? I just tried a honey sheet mask and it was AMAZING so now I kind of want to bathe in honey all the time.
I make a 1-to-1 mixture of Greek yogurt and honey and slather it on my face.
It’s not a very involved process, lol.
Agreed! When I would use actual face wash my skin would dry out like crazy. I shower and wash it with water then moisturize when I get out of the shower. I only use eye makeup remover (because that is basically the only makeup I wear and unfortunately They’re Real! mascara does not come off with just water).
I find morbid enjoyment in pulling off waterproof mascara. Yes I am weird.
This is maybe a stupid question, but does coconut oil have a strong smell? Like that beach-y, sunscreen-y smell? I ask because I’ve had pretty good luck with argan oil but coconut is cheaper and easier to find, so I’d like to try it–but I loooooooathe that coconut smell.
It sorta smells like coconut, but for me only when I practically stick my nose in the jar. Maybe see if anyone you know already has a jar of coconut oil and smell it? The coconut smell isn’t like coconut-scented products or even like coconut in food. It makes me break out so I’m too scared to try any other oils 🙁
Thank you!
I have never thought so – depending which one you buy there can definitely be a smell, but not the ‘smacked in the face with a coconut’ sweetness. Like the difference between actual strawberries and pink candy flavoring? But then I buy the stuff that’s way cheap and also made for cooking, so you might have a different experience.
Thank you!
I’ve never thought so; there’s a vague hint of coconut in the jar, but I can’t smell anything from my hands or face.
It also doesn’t flavour food much, so if you do buy a jar and not like it, you can always use it for cooking!
Good suggestion, thank you!
Raw, unrefined coconut oil will definitely have that strong, beachy smell. But almost all refined coconut oil is odorless and can be found in the cooking oil section at almost any grocery store. Just make sure that it says “refined” and “deodorized” on the container and you should be all good!
Thank you!!
I just saw this study about American’s perceptions of privacy and data-sharing that I thought was really interesting: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/01/14/privacy-and…
I’ll be honest, I really only skimmed most of the survey responses they included, but I really liked the breakdown of their findings. Specifically that there isn’t really one demographic that’s more likely to be okay sharing information than another. It all comes down to specific situations and cost/benefit analysis and how the trade-off is presented.
1. You’re pretty!
2. Everyone everyone my church (the episcopal church in the US) was sanctioned by the anglican communion for all the terrible things we do re: performing same sex marriages (there’s also historical beef about women clergy I think), and I have such feelings of sadness, but also am weirdly happy because I never thought I’d go to a church again much less a church that I can get behind on the social issues, and also am really nervous because I NEVER get involved in church politics because that shit is MESSY. And also the general trepidation about endorsing a religious body out loud at all. But: Episcopalians, America. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re slowly dwindling in membership.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith…
When I was looking for a church, it was of huge benefit to me that most non-denominational churches have websites, and if they have a margin link that says “Homosexuals” or “Values” (invariably leading to information about “Homosexuals”), I would just not go there.
My church is all “we are always looking for condoms and tampons to take to the sex worker resource center” and “we are giving this special collection to refugees” while also being really super into Jesus, and I am so grateful to have found it.
Liking this response both for the judgment call on “Values” links (it’s true! also words to watch out for: Bible-based, Bible-believing, etc…) and for the church you’ve found, which sounds AMAZING.
Yesss. One main reason my agnostic ass shows up at my local Episcopal church whenever possible is because we regularly have protesters out front, due to our abortion assistance (a member of the church will go lend support if needed for women seeking abortions) program, and our many lgbt parishioners and clergy. It’s a good metric and they need all the support they can get.
(You should still click on the “Values” link if it’s there, though, bc sometimes it says that they are NOT homophobic.)
I found my Episcopalian church by googling “open and accomdating” “Episcopal” “my zipcode”. Our current leadership includes an ex-nun who is married to a woman. It is the BEST place.
I consciously tried to raise my daughter in a pro-women-in-all-kinds-of-jobs environment and God bless the Episcopalian church in my town because frequently there would be an all woman priest and deacons group up there at the altar prepping the Eucharist and it was just so natural and wonderful and subtle and yet very, very revolutionary.
Episcopalian4life (that should be a hashtag, but am not doing that really because it feels weird).
I need to get back into it. I think I’ll look into Saturday afternoon service to pick things up again, as I took a Sunday morning job recently and can’t go then. I feel bad about dwindling membership, but so glad about them standing up for LGBT rights and reform.
Can this amazing ex-nun please pitch to the Toast?
Seconded! I hardly ever go to church anymore because two small children, but I joined the Episcopal Church precisely because of all the terrible things it does, plus liturgy. I just need that archaic language and those stately hymns.
I’m proud of the Episcopalians. Our big sis made the right move. Now if only little sis (United Methodist) could get her act together.
I grew up a very committed, yay-for-Jesus United Methodist and still have love for the church, but we need to shape up. When I was in elementary school the bishop of my (very conservative) conference walked out of general conference to protest the firing of gay clergy then had all the other clergy rush around to assure everyone that it wasn’t because she was gay, we swear!!!!! …and the entire situation was my unpleasant introduction to the concept of church politics and the fact that there were mysterious ‘values’ coming from somewhere outside the bible to make people miserable.
Former United Methodist sending many congratulations to big sis on the occasion of being sanctioned.
Oh God, that sounds awful 🙁 we do need to shape the hell up. My conference went 60-40 in favor of GLBT inclusion and marriage last year, we’ll see if General Conference will be as big of a fiasco as 2012 was.
Ooooh, I’m so happy you’re in a not-fiasco conference! I want to think that even in the last four years there’s been progress in everyone’s mindset — I’ve seen it on a micro-level, at least, with lots of semi-conservative UM clergy and parishioners coming around to the idea that committed, loving same-sex relationships are cool with God — but I don’t have a huge amount of faith that will be reflected in General Conference.
I find that one of the major undercurrents of mainline resistance to GLBT inclusion (other than most mainline churches are aging) is the notion that we’ll be attacked by evangelicals for not being “Bible-based”. I am just like, know your bible well enough and the arguments well enough to make your case. It is possible to argue different interpretations or translations of those passages. You don’t have to concede the bible to the haters. Plus there’s the whole issue of making the bible into God, which is idolatry, but that’s another set of arguments…
YES. Deeply agreed. One thing I’ve always really appreciated about United Methodists is their ‘the devil can cite scripture for his purpose’ approach to the Bible — taking it seriously, but being aware that the writing, the interpretation, and the selection-for-argument are all happening through a human lens. For instance, during my confirmation we read a bunch of pro- and anti-slavery arguments that were supposedly bible-based, and talked about how to interpret the Bible and morality in cases like those, where a person can slam “slaves, obey your masters” on the table and think they’ve won. I would like to see more of those conversations happening within the church.
Besides — maybe it’s my martyr-y former-Christian side coming through, but I very firmly believe that as you stand for what’s right rather than constructing your morality around what will preserve your membership lists. Every time I hear Methodists arguing that “wishy-washy” liberal Christianity is shrinking while Evangelical churches are growing and thriving, therefore we should be less liberal, I am so full of fury. Sometimes I say mean things about whitewashed tombs, and get very blank looks.
In other words, I am so happy there are Methodist Toasties holding the line. Thank you!
When I went to a United Church of Christ (a very liberal denomination), in Sunday school once, our pastor said “I really don’t understand why people think the Bible is the word of God. It says right here, this is a letter from Paul to the Ephesians. That’s not the word of God. That’s the word of PAUL.”
I wonder how much of the growth of evangelical churches is actual conviction and how much is just enculturation with conservative politics. But I am a remarkably cynical person.
Let’s put it this way. If liberal Jewish movements, whose ONLY scripture is the bits that are explicitly anti-gay, can have figured out a way for being down with gay marriage for the last 9 years or longer, then the Christians, who have a New Testament that says nothing about homosexuality, should be able to figure it out.
A frickin men.
I have a small amount of confidence in the young adults (clergy & lay) that our AC is sending to general, but our AC in general was pretty rough last year.
We had a few really spiteful-feeling decisions made and it wasn’t even about controversial issues, it was about where to have the next conference… Not to mention how often the body would huff and puff when we couldn’t get a majority on a vote?
It was my first year attending as a lay delegate, and dang if it wasn’t discouraging to see so many adults acting like it was super inconvenient for them to be there. This is a privilege, y’all. Act like it.
That sounds reeeeeeally discouraging, I am sorry. Maybe next time they’ll wear out all their spite on geography, and then you can swoop in and make good decisions about the controversial things while they’re lying panting on the floor?
The privilege thing…very yes. Our conference voted down a resolution in support of a statewide increase of the minimum wage to $15/hr. I was astounded at how many people got up and said, “this would hurt my business” or “this would hurt the business of someone I know”. Clearly, the people whom it actually affected couldn’t take the time off to be at the conference, or maybe aren’t even part of our church in the first place. Says an awful damn lot, either way.
” But: Episcopalians, America. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re slowly dwindling in membership. ” Now let’s open some wine and pass it around while the choir sings something beautiful in Latin. In 8 parts.
<3 the Episcopalians. I rarely go to church anymore, but they are my people. (And a slight majority also seem to be recovering Catholics).
The Episcopal church is my bailout plan if my wonderful hippy Catholic parish priest ever gets replaced with the more conservative variety. Seriously. The only thing keeping me Catholic at this point is my wish not to upset my beloved 94 year old grandmother.
I don’t understand this. I thought the Church of England also had same sex marriage? (Or have they not?) But then why would they suspend the Episcopal church for this very reason?
From what I can tell (baby episcopalian here, and that article taught me a good amount about church structure), they did not. Maybe they had a parish-level-decision type thing going on, but all my google searches on the topic are obscured by today’s news.
Googling this is a good idea, don’t know why I didn’t think of this. I found this: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33109170. I knew I heard about a gay vicar getting married.
So if I understand it correctly, they don’t have a problem with civil partnerships/marriages, but don’t allow actual church weddings. (Which makes sense since they originate from the Catholic Church, where marriage serves the purpose of having biological children, and thus same-sex marriage is not considered an actual marriage.)
From the article: Ahead of the meetings this week, some expected the primates on the more conservative end of the church to walk out of the meetings if the Episcopal Church was not sanctioned.
For a second I was like, “….are there literal monkeys involved in Anglicanism? I feel like I would have heard about this.”
I live in the south and would love to swing by an Episcopalian church but I can’t tell the difference between the awesome lgbt loving branch and the breakaway “we hate the gay bishop” versions. They both interchangeably use the names “Episcopalian” or “Anglican” and there’s just so many down here. Also, they are fighting over property in the court system so who is holding services in the old church building depends on who won in court that week. What’s an easy way to tell?
I live in Texas, and I found mine by googling various terms like “open and affirming” and “inclusive” along with Episcopalian. My parish is not only the “gay” parish, but the Anglo-Catholic, incense swinging, psalm chanting parish, so we’re considered Odd on every front by the Archdiocese. It’s great.
That is the best! I want open and affirming + pomp and panoply.
It’s the best. I was so happy to stumble onto it. Turns out I have a high church soul.
We made the bishop wear a mitre at rites of renewal last year. It was fantastic. He thought the Rector was joking. The Rector was NOT joking.
Dude. This is what I want, as long as they don’t care I’m atheist.
Also, at least in DC, the blue-red-and-white “the episcopal church welcomes you” signs are a good bet. Churches that describe themselves as Anglican are generally PEARUSA // ACNA here, ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) being the group that (at least at the level of leadership politics) advocated for the Episcopal church’s suspension.
Again, this is at the upper levels – individual churches often vary and I don’t want to poop on anyone. But I’m pretty sure you won’t find any gay priests at an ACNA church.
Many progressive churches in my city put little rainbow flags in the corner of their signs. That’s a dead giveaway.
It really depends on the individual church/parish. I miss St. Andrew’s in Houston like CRAZY, because it was vibrant and our rector was the BEST EVER, super open-minded and welcoming and high on my list of Good Men. The bishop for the diocese of Texas is less awesome, but that’s okay because the rector’s awesomeness cancels him out.
So I would visit the ones near you and chat with the clergy, ask if they’d ever held a same-sex wedding or would hold one. That would be really telling.
You could also try an ELCA Lutheran church if you are so inclined. They do span the gamut of liberal to conservative, but if you look for an official “reconciling” designation or they have this statement on their website “All God’s children are welcome, wherever they are from, whatever their age, the color of their skin, the contents of their wallet, no matter whom they love, how they speak, and whatever their abilities or disabilities; for all are one, reconciled to God in Christ Jesus.”
The United Church of Christ is another really liberal denomination.
I do not go to church anymore but I have very fond memories of the Episcopalian church I went to as a kid. They’re good, chill people who have excellent bread at communion.
My sentiments exactly. The bread was so soft and nummy. Also I remember our pastor once gave a straight-up history lesson about the pagan roots of Christmas as his sermon. That was really cool.
I was just really proud when I read Bishop Curry’s statement. No bending the knee, just sadness they won’t get with the program. #episcopals4lyfe
Even though I will never go to a church, if I *did* go to one, it would probably be the Episcopal church. Good job you guys!
That’s awesome!! (Not the dwindling membership, but the same sex marriage and women clergy part.)
My church in Canada is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and we also support same sex marriages, women clergy, and clergy who are gay and queer (with no requirement for celibacy which used to be a thing.)
Hurray for churches that care about social issues!!!
This is Relevant To My Interests! My mother recently moved out to my side of the country to be closer to me, and we have been talking about finding a church to attend (partly as a means of helping her find some community out here). She is interested in the local Episcopal church, so I’ve been reading up on its beliefs. I’m kind of more drawn to quakerism, but I’ll go to whichever church she likes (within reason) if it helps her with adjusting here.
*raises hand* am here too! The second person I came out to (i’m ace) was the priest at my Anglican church in Canada, and she was so kind about it. Like, I hadn’t expected her to judge or be mean but you know, it sort of felt like jumping off a cliff, saying those words out loud.
I grew up United Church of Christ, and got used to accepting that 90% of the time when people refered to what “Christians” do/believe, they were not talking about me/us. Also, that “hip” Christian youth culture made me viscerally uncomfortable.
I was a UCC member for a couple of years, and I’m an atheist now, and I still love telling people about the UCC. My church did so much service to the community with so few money and people, and my pastor was so wonderful. I loved her.
I decided to hang with the Episcopalians after i quit Mormons, to fulfill my need to have a religious group to hang with. I heard the news of the sanction yesterday and it made me proud and happy to be hanging with these folks.
I am also Epsicopalian, and I am proud of our church for sticking with it. Although of course I’m not happy overall that the Communion felt they needed to sanction us. Plus I’m in NC, which means that Bishop Curry was our bishop before he became Presiding Bishop, so I am happy that everyone else gets to see how awesome he is.
Sounds like my kinda people! My seminary recently passed a resolution admitting intermarried people (this is a BIG DEAL for Judaism) and the Jewish press has been running nonstop articles insinuating that, as a result of this decision, we are going to slowly die. But the Jewish people has been dying for thousands of years, so, no big.
I don’t do much in the way of daily skincare beyond a wash but I am ADDICTED to face masks (and Sephora). I currently own about 5 or 6 different ones and collect as many samples as possible. Current favourite is boscia’s Luminizing Black Mask cuz I love watching myself peel it off in the mirror. Stuff of horror movies.
Also! I stumbled across the Crossfit Games with a friend while channel surfing. Two hours later we were still glued to the screen.
I used my Sephora gift card to buy that Peter Thomas Roth five mask set and it just warms my heart to see them lined up in my bathroom. I’ve used the moor mud one and the rose one so far.
I adore masks of all kinds. Recently I’ve been swapping out my night moisturizer for the Sephora-brand jelly night masks–they say “single use” on the packet but really they put so much in there that 1 $4 mask gives enough product for the whole week. I just pop it in the fridge to store.
Oh man. That night mask is so good and such a good deal.
Boscia’s peel masks are my FAVORITE THING. I’m a gross person who looooooves to peel her sunburns, so those masks are like a helpful way to get my weird kicks!
I’m going to try to post in the open thread but I may be asleep then so here’s a quick note to thank everyone for all their kind words and advice on my laparoscopy, which I had on Wednesday. No endometrial adhesions turned up, though I had some bowel adhesions. But this is obviously making me worry that adenomyosis (sp?) is the culprit and next up is hysterectomy, but I shouldn’t be worrying about that just yet I guess. First night I slept ok, last night I just could not get comfy. I’m a side sleeper so abdominal surgery is a bummer for me, I guess. I’m pretty sore all over, especially my throat (anesthesiologist says I am due for a scoping for my GERD), and tired, and frustrated. Going to try napping again. Thanks again for everyone’s advice and encouragement, it helped so so so so much.
Sending you good vibes and thoughts! Take as many naps as you want to and I hope you feel better soon!
I have been hoping and praying they’d come up with a better treatment for adenomyosis soon. There is one, sort of. I haven’t had insurance so I’ve been ignoring it.
it’s called magnetic-resonance guided focused ultrasound surgery.
here is a link to an article:
http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282%2808%…
I have been trying not to get my hopes up, it seem like something not everyone would have the experience or ability for, but I am praying I get a real job with real insurance and then I’m going to hunt down a specialist who can do this.
That is really interesting! I personally don’t have any attachment to my uterus so getting rid of it isn’t bothering me so much. The lupron thing I feel much more weird about to be honest. At this point I just feel like I’ve tried everything. Several years of combined hormonal birth control were amazing, until j started getting migraines all the time. My IUD never sat right and caused constant pain. Progesterone only pills made me homicidal and hungry. And now we’ve actually gone in and looked and there’s no endo anywhere to be seen anywhere. Sigh.
I’m not so much attached to my uterus as…well, traumatized. The penunultimate time I had sex ended in miscarriage, then I broke my pelvis, then marital rape, and since then nothing. I’ll be damned if I spend my 40’s celibate only to head straight into menopause, surgical or not. That would NOT be part A (or B through Z, or any) of reclaiming my sexuality–and dammit, that IS going to happen. That I *have* to believe in. (Universe, are you listening?)
That sounds incredibly awful, I’m so sorry. No wonder you are traumatized. Otoh, I absolutely have faith in you reclaiming your sexuality! Have you checked out the book “Come As You Are”? You might find it really interesting (just a note for anyone reading along: it is about and for cis women, although frankly a lot of it isn’t that specific and men I know who’ve read it have found it helpful and informative).
Fwiw, my gyn said if I do need a hysterectomy, he would leave my ovaries, so I wouldn’t be going through menopause. Or not much at least.
Sisquiet went from Crossfit into strongman lifting and won her division at her first-ever competition this past weekend! It was crazy, not just seeing people deadlift 315 for reps but also taking in all the cheering for everyone involved. Each competitor tried a 75-pound circus dumbbell overhead press, deadlifts, 450-pound tire flips, a 175-pound sandbag carry, and atlas stones. It was exhausting just to watch–it’s hard to imagine what it was like to do! But the competitors seemed to be having a super fun time, and the range of ages and body types drove home that it’s a sport that anyone who wants to can try.
Would sisquiet like to be interviewed by me for the site??
I will find out! She’s the bee’s knees and funny as hell, so I hope she says yes.
I am so incredibly impressed by Sisquiet! Strongwoman comps are pretty damn tough.. I’m only strong enough to show up to an unsanctioned one. 😅
My victory of the week is getting my barre-loving bestie to go to Crossfit with me tomorrow. I love the video because everyone is so encouraging, and Ms. Camille is so smiley.
Camille is a national treasure!
I hardly ever read romance novels, but that book by Ruby Lang looks interesting since the conflict set up is really interesting and genuine. I am genuinely torn over hockey and whether I would let a kid of mine play (I would absolutely not let them play football before high school, and not be pleased if they played then).
Also she is a super cool human being and I’m so excited for her! Go Ruby!
(Sports scare me, as a parent.) (They kind of bore me, as a human.) (One of my sons plays soccer a lot. The other huddles inside reading & playing music & watching netflix, like a good boy.)
I also thought that conflict sounded interesting and not overly manufactured like I’ve found in some romances. I will say the last part of the description, “Sensuality Level: Sensual” made me laugh. How sensual is sensual?
http://imgur.com/gallery/c355ypg
I would really, really, really like to forbid my (currently hypothetical) kid from playing football.
But my husband played football all through high school and college and has expressed a desire in helping to coach football at the high school level in a volunteer capacity, and there’s just no way he can do that and we can forbid our children from joining the team.
It also doesn’t help my case that I sustained more long-term injuries dancing ballet (I messed up me knees, ankles, and back) than my husband did playing football (he broke his nose once)
Well…that he knows of. I played football from 5th to 12th grade, and there’s a world of difference between the game played by 10 year olds, the game played by 18 year olds, and the game played by 26 year olds, but the body of evidence that has grown regarding brain damage terrifies me (well, honestly, I’m more terrified of all the things we don’t know about it). CTE isn’t limited to pro athletes; it has been found in very young people. Football gave me friendships that have stayed strong in the decade since I left high school, and discipline, and physical fitness, but I genuinely don’t know if I’d ever let my kids play the game.
Do you know if he’s seen the frontline documentary on CTE and head injuries in football? Is he a reader? I’ve heard that League of Denial is well written. It might be worth trying to convince him to watch/ read those. I’m not saying it will change his mind, but they are well done.
Also this piece about Chris Borland is a good piece to look at about the moral calculus of football. He retired at 24 due to concerns about his health. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13463272/how-fo…
As I said, I genuinely understand you being in a tough spot, but just offering some pieces that might change someone’s mind.
He does know some of that at least, and he is a great supporter of all the new safety guidelines and whatnot in professional football.
Like i said, the kid is currently hypothetical, so the good news is that it is an ongoing conversation, and we have at least 15 years. Maybe it’s not even something i have to worry about
There’s a shop called BalletHoo near me which sells t-shirts reading “If ballet was easy, it would be called football.”
(This is in Britain, so it means soccer.)
My brother is tall but skinny and my mom absolutely would not let him play football, and at the time my dad thought she was just being overprotective and a stick in the mud (this was about 10 years ago). Now that all the information has come out about how dangerous it is, he has since avowed, several times, that it was the smartest thing she ever did. And he’s a non-apologizer.
“…he ordered every dessert on the menu if you couldn’t decide.”
Alan Rickman: literally the best man in the entire world.
We would have kept him, too, when we ejected the rest of the men into the sun. Because FUCK YEAH RICKMAN.
(We will also be keeping Stanley Tucci.)
Those feminist resolutions are kind of a mixed bag, but I loved Refuse to collaborate with a man. It’s one of my personal goals to seek and see more awesome women my age (~30ish) who work on amazing issues and do it in a sisterhood-y way.
One of my personal faves is the Mother Nature Project, which fundraises in Canada and donates reusable menstrual products (cups and washable pads) to girls in Cameroon. What’s your favourite women-led/all-women project/band/organization/business venture?
I loved the last one. I feel like the women of Ireland should just say fuck it and occupy the GPO or something until they legalize abortion (It would be fitting, 1916 was the first occupation of the GPO where the men demanded freedom, 100 years later women just want the same thing!)
My friend’s mother started Sylvia’s Sisters (http://www.sylviassisters.org/) which has a similar mission – ‘“Sylvia’s Sisters” is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit group of Richmond, Virginia women who have taken up the task of sewing washable, reusable feminine hygiene pads for [young girls in regions of the world where poverty is extreme] and assembling a small kit of other essential items to deal with their monthly period in a healthy way and without embarrassment.’ My friend travels semi-regularly to Africa for business and brings their products along, so the charity is able to save a lot on delivery costs.
It is a pretty awesome goal!
Also, your link isn’t working, but I’m totally going to go and google it right now.
Oh snap! Thanks! The link is http://www.mothernaturepartnership.org/
you were beautiful before the magic elixirs, Nicole, and now you are even more beautiful.
My beauty advice is USE SUNSCREEN, even if you work in an office.
Does anyone have sunscreen recs? I’m afraid to wear it every day because the skin on my face is touchy (well, my skin in general is touchy). Also I’m really turned off by a lot of perfumes/smells, so when I do have sunscreen I quickly reach a point where I can’t persude myself to use it
Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch is the only sunscreen I can wear on my face without it driving me nuts (or breaking me out) – super lightweight, has a little bit of sunscreen smell but it seems to fade quickly.
Seconding that recommendation- and if you want something with a little color I’ve been crazy happy with the Neutrogena Healthy Skin Glow tinted moisturizer/foundation.
Depending on your sensitivities you may want to consider a mostly- or totally-physical sunscreen (titanium dioxide and zinc oxide) because those are usually less sensitizing than the synthetic sunscreens.
I use the Oil of Olay sensitive skin complete all-day moisturizer, which has an SPF of 15, and that works like a top. No smell, very light!
I like the Nivea invisible spray sunblock for the actual ‘I’m going to be in the sun and will definitely burn without it’ days; I haaate the smell of suncream, and the feeling of it on my skin, this ones a little greasy but its the best one I’ve found.
I haven’t found a good every day face one yet (but then I haven’t been looking super hard)
I like Cerave AM. I pretty much only use Cerave products on my face and I’m very happy with them. I still break out sometimes, but I am pretty sure literally nothing in the world will prevent my face from the occasional breakout.
Seconding this. Cerave is the only brand that doesn’t make my skin either break out in rashes, zits, or eczema.
Josie Maran Argan Daily Moisturizer 47 SPF is my favorite. It’s expensive, but sunscreen is something I’ll pay $$$ for.
I also wear hats in the summer. Protection from the sun is Serious Business.
I was convinced Josie Maran would be The One for me, but after 3 days of use it broke me out for weeks thanks to silicones ;(
This one from Shiseido doesn’t have a noticeable smell to me and is very moisturizing.
I’m a big fan of this Biore sunscreen for the summer – it has too much alcohol for my dry skin to tolerate it during the winter – but it smells very strongly of alcohol at first (it goes away really fast but it might be a turn-off for you).
Right now I’m using this sunscreen because you can never put too much snail goo on your face. It smells like candy (generic sweet smell) but in a nice way (to me).
FWIW I tried the Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch and hated it. It smelled like old lady perfume that had gone off and it either pilled on my skin or dried into a film I had to peel off.
you can never have too much snails – words to live by
I use a Desert Essence SPF 15 moisturizer in the winter (yeah, SPF 15 is barely anything, but I am in the sun for about 5 minutes a day). In the summer, if I’m spending a lot of time outside, I use La Roche Posay’s Anthelios sunscreen. It’s a little pricey, but it doesn’t smell, doesn’t irritate my skin, sinks in pretty well, and lasts a really long time if you only put it on your face. I wore it for an all-day sports competition on a hot white beach in July, and despite sweating a LOT and only reapplying once, I was the only one on my team who didn’t get sunburned on my face.
Co-sign on La Roche Posay’s facial sunscreen. That stuff is worth its weight in gold. I have super sensitive skin and it has never once irritated me and it really does last a long time (both the bottle and once applied).
Cotz (I use http://www.amazon.com/Face-Natural-Skin-Tone-SPF/…! It is the best thing I have ever gotten in a Birchbox. It makes my skin SO SOFT, and also evens out my skin tone, which I really like. I usually just wear this and concealer where needed, and am good to go.
/r/asianbeauty has tons of recs for truly great japanese sunscreens that work better and are more gentle than western brands
I finally tried a Korean BB Cream (Hollika Clearing, which says SPF 30), and so far it’s one of the few sunblocks that doesn’t make my face red and itchy! MAGIC. Either that or the sunblock is zinc oxide/titanium dioxide, I honestly don’t know.
I can’t use facial sunscreen that contains avobenzone or oxybenzone, which makes it hard. However, Neutrogena Pure and Free liquid sunscreen (SPF 50) contains only physical sunscreens but is also water resistant. It works great under tinted moisturizer and I would guess would also work well under foundation, although since I don’t wear it I can’t swear to that.
I find All Terrain’s sunblocks to be great for sensitive/acne-prone skin, and the smell is faint and fades to nothing almost immediately. It’s waterproof to the point where it’s hard to get off, though.
Does it need to be taken off? I mean, can you feel it while it’s on your skin the entire time?
Alas, yes, you can feel it. It definitely sits on top of your skin.
I never leave my house! My beauty advice is: no makeup, no sunscreen, a bit of lotion at night, and be a total hermit. Your face will be glorious.
My skin is never better than when I do nothing to it other than splash it with some water.
….and yet I still own and use hundreds of dollars worth of skin care.
It always looks so promising!
It costs so much, it must be worth it!
If it makes me break out, it must be user error somehow!
Sunscreen is magic
I don’t want to start a whole thing, but I unfortunately have MS now and part of it might be due to (a) moving north to a place where going out in the sun in winter is hard for me (as a former Floridian) and (b) putting lotion on my face every morning (my only skincare regime) that had sunscreen in it. Probably lots of other things too (for example (c) genes).
That vitamin D is critical in winter months! This isn’t just hand-waving, there are legitimate studies out there regarding this theory. So, I guess, sunscreen in summer, yea, but think about it some in winter, if you’re up north. Or a hermit.
My mom moved from NY to Ireland for three years when she married my dad; she spent the next 25 years allergic to the sun because her skin just lost all tolerance for it. Like, having to take benadryl and use SPF30 in the summer after being someone who managed to never sunburn in her youth in spite of wearing baby oil on the beach.
I only wear sunscreen if I’ve been acid-exfoliating.
I loved Alan Rickman before (Colonel Brandon is the perfect man) but reading this made me love him MORE:
“he ordered every dessert on the menu if you couldn’t decide.”
Is it just me or did Ann Friedman read and allude to Nikki’s piece? Specifically:
Call out casual racism. Start practicing your best “who farted?” face in the mirror for the next time you’re at a social event and someone implies that all Asians look the same or tries to engage in a pseudo-intellectual debate about whether blackface is truly offensive. In 2016 there is no time for staying silent in the moment and shaking your head about it later.
She linked to it! (on “implies” in that paragraph)
Nice, GO Nikki! Also, I am bad at the internet.
It was a very subtle link!
You are kind. After this and missing Mallory’s Gigi tags I was feeling like An Old.
THANK YOU.
Ann Friedman shared the piece in her newsletter last week, so I know she read it! Longreads shared the same day, but I didn’t love the writeup so I didn’t tweet it.
It was also mentioned in NPR’s Code Switch blog!
Not only mentioned, but scoring three of ten full paragraphs of analysis, and a lengthy pull quote! So great, thank you for linking!!
I don’t know if the links were included when you read it, but currently there is a link to Nikki’s article embedded in “implies” of that sentence.
So I would say yes 🙂
Sansa is getting so biiiiiiig!
I thought Bill Bryson’s answer to “what books do you avoid” was classy yet snarky in the best possible way. But also disappointing, because now I want to read his memoir of life with a pet. (Is A Walk In The Woods his version of Eat, Pray, Love? “A man embarks on a life-changing travel adventure…and remains an out-of-shape, cynical bastard.”) But seriously Bill Bryson’s biography of his dog (I do not know whether he has a dog) plus the history of pets and humans living together would be SO GOOD.
I doubt that he has a dog since there is a long detour in his Australia book about how all dogs hate him and he thinks he’s being chased by some through a park and ends up crawling through some woman’s backyard.
He does now! He mentioned in At Home that his family has a dog, though given his long hatred of dogs I think his family overruled him on this.
Okay, now I really need to read about his relationship with that dog.
If Eat, Pray, Love made you wet your pants laughing, then yes it is the same. It is so, so funny; I love all his books but that one is my favorite. Second favorite is the one about Australia.
If I remember correctly, all dogs want to murder him, except for those rare few who want to make passionate love to his leg.
That bit about Eat, Pray, Love made me a bit sad, too. I know it has its flaws, but I liked it, and I know a lot of people who did, and I hate that it’s become shorthand for a *certain* kind of book enjoyed by women.
I did wonder if he had read it (I haven’t, but also have many trusted reader friends who enjoyed it) or was just going by the stereotype. I can understand him saying he won’t read that “finding oneself” sort of memoir though, given how differently he writes about his own experiences.
I think the book suffered a lot from the film they made of it, tbh. I read it after reading Committed, her book about marriage (best gift I got on my engagement, bar none) so I was predisposed to like her already.
Committed was SO GOOD. There were long passages I constantly wanted to quote at people!
I have used the “windows and walls” section innumerable times.
I found “Eat, Pray Love” in a free pile and figured I’d give it a hate-read and I really liked it. I don’t like the industry it’s spawned, but the book itself is damn good.
If I remember right, Bryson concludes that the upshot for him was to reconnect with a old friend (in his years-previous book Neither Here Nor There, they wander around Europe gradually coming to hate each other) and was “for a time, amazingly fit” but it wasn’t transformative. On the other hand, things had not gone so well in life in for Katz, and Bryson notes that the walking seemed to help him, in a low-key way.
My blood pressure went up reading that Dear Prudence. If some strange person was in my kitchen uninvited every morning talking shit to me, that person would be getting cut.
“If your Prada bag arrives here, you may be certain that you will find out when it arrives in a flaming lump on your fucking stoop. Now get the fuck out of my kitchen.” – said at knifepoint
YASSSSS
What I can’t get over is that the ex is there to see her kids off to school, but is somehow getting in the way as the letter writer gets them dressed? Why isn’t their mother getting them dressed, if she’s there? Does she literally come over just to hug them goodbye as they go out the door?
I don’t even want people I like to talk to me in the morning.
RIGHT? This was my thing. If their mother is coming over in the morning, why isn’t she helping?
I wonder what would happen if the letter-writer started assigning her tasks? “Oh, hey, you’re here! Can you help Janie get her shoes and coat on? Thanks!”
And make a damn new pot of COFFEE, this is morning my god you monster.
I bet she would quit coming over if LW slept in and insisted on the mother doing ALL the work of getting the kids out of the house if she’s going to be there every morning.
My blood pressure was at a permanent boil while my in-laws were in town because they WOULD NOT GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN. I love to cook, but alas have a pretty tiny kitchen. Stop standing behind me when I’m at the stove! Stop coming into the kitchen just because you heard me pouring a cup of coffee! Stop drunkenly demanding to help when I have told you a million times that there is no room for two people to be moving around in here when there are hot things coming out of the oven!
I cannot even imagine that on top of trying to get children ready. Infuriating.
I mean, I have reasonable expectations that Mr Lass will politely acknowledge/accommodate the teenager’s dad – but that bar is set at: no punching
(headlocks are permissable, if provoked) (I’m joking, mostly)
EVERY. MORNING.
yeah that’s unacceptable.
I have also fallen headfirst into K-beauty. I shouldn’t tell you all that you can get multipacks of sheet masks on Amazon for like $10-15 (usually a dollar a mask or less), but you totally can. I’m slowly adding more products to fill out the routine, so it’s a gradual transition, but it’s so nice to come home from work, change into yoga pants, and sit around for twenty minutes in a sheet mask.
Ali Express has them super cheap too!
Ooooh!! Recommendations for your faves?
I love the My Beauty Diary sake masks. They’re supposed to be a knockoff of the SKII masks that are just, vomit-inducing expensive. I think they really do make you look nice and glowy and hydrated.
I might have to try this, on my partner, though it might take some doing to work around their beard. They keep getting awful dry spots that drives them nuts, but there’s no way they can remember lotion daily because brain weird. But a mask they could do while playing a video game.
Hmm, in that situation I might try what they refer to as a “sleeping pack” or “sleeping mask”. Basically, it’s a super hydrating layer of goop that you either apply very thickly and remove like a regular mask, or as a thinner layer and let soak in. I particularly like the Glossier Moon Mask, but you have to order it online. Another option that’s available at Target is the Korean brand Laneige’s Sleeping Water Mask. That way you could remind him to apply it, but he wouldn’t have to remember to take it off. Sheet masks are great, but while they are hydrating, if he really has the flakies, they might not cut it.
! “Stuff we can buy at Target” is pretty boss, since I live in Nowhere Missouri and the exciting place to hang out is the grocery store. (Well okay there’s bars too but they’re full of drunk legislators and nope.) Thank you! We might be shopping tonight. Their flakies are driving me nuts, since they keep grumbling sadly.
As a frequent battler of the flakies, I feel their grumbles. While you are at Target I would also look for the brand Nugg, which makes masks that come in little single serving pods, like coffee creamer. Also, if your Target doesn’t stock the Laneige, I poked around and Olay makes their own version!
http://www.target.com/p/olay-active-botanicals-ov…
I also live in Missouri! Yay!
My favorite so far has been The Face Shop anti-aging one – it’s super-soaked in moisturizer, so much so that I can usually squeeze extra out of the package to rub on my neck a little. The Face Shop also has “character” masks that make you look like a panda/reindeer/dragon/whatever while the mask is on, and they creep my husband out but I love them. I just got my first multi-pack off Amazon so I’m still trying those out, but this is what I ordered.
Korean sheet masks are the literal best way I know to have a ~treat yo self~ day for me. My favourite mask of all time is the Bird’s Nest mask from My Beauty Diary which is basically bird spit & glycerin & makes my face feel FABULOUS!
Am I the only person for whom sheet masks do nothing? I’ve tried a bunch.
I swore off foundation last year and I swear to you, my skin has never looked better, and I say this as someone who has been plagued by hormonal acne her whole life. I use a somewhat-fancy moisturizer that I stumbled upon in an Ipsy box (Dr. Brandt Pores No More Anti-Aging Mattifying Lotion [just looked up the name from my Amazon orders, I do not have it memorized]) which is very lightweight and doesn’t turn my face into an oil slick like most moisturizers, then some mascara, and that is it. The only downside of the moisturizer is it doesn’t have sunscreen, so I add the Neutrogena Dry Touch stuff underneath if I’m going to be out in the sun and it works fine.
I just cannot stress enough how good it feels now, how much lighter and less oily my face is, without foundation. The first couple of weeks were tough because I felt so exposed and yuck, but after my skin recovered a bit and I got used to my natural face, I loved it. My skin is NOT perfect and I still get some breakouts, but it’s what I look like, you know?
I despise foundation and the less I wear is the more I hate it! Its so heavy and I hate not being able to touch my face (And I always end up looking 100 times worse with foundation because I inevitably touch my face and smudge the crap out of it)
I stopped wearing it regularly as a teenager, but then I got a bar job that required make up a few years ago and I noticed a sever drop in my skin quality! All of a sudden I looked all pale and washed out without make up.
I have recently found a foundation that I don’t hate wearing, but like I’ve worn it once and I bought it at Halloween last year!
There’s also a Murad Mattifying lotion that does have sunscreen, if you’re interested in that. As a fellow oily person, I think it’s the “mattifying” aspect that’s key.
We did it with Jonathan, and then to my great, great happiness, they did it when Jonathan left, and Andrew took over.
So is JGroff no longer in the role at all? He’s listed in the cast on broadway.com and hamiltonbroadway.com.
He left for a little while filming a movie, but he’s back now.
Me: Mom tell me how radiant my skin looks I am using Korean products isn’t it radiant?
Mom: Everyone has radiant skin until they are 25 so maybe not for much longer.
Me: …
Mom: Also can you buy me some Korean products too
Bill Bryson is one of the few writers who literally makes me laugh out loud. I can still remember laying on my teenage bed and reading “A Walk in the Woods” – laughing soundlessly with tears running down my face, lest my parents overhear any raucous laughter from their bookish, solitary child and worry I had gone insane.
He is also one of the many things that makes me proud to be from Iowa.
“Actually, if I am honest, I didn’t read “Timon of Athens.” I don’t think anyone ever has.”
No one has said truer words than these from Bill Bryson.
I’VE READ IT.
I knew this was gonna be some kind of Toast-summoning charm.
I read it, but only because I took a Shakespeare seminar in college where we read ALL the plays.
Read it twice and saw a production! (None of those were exactly by choice, though.)
URSULA!
I had no idea about the queer connection but I have always identified strongly with her as a fat woman, and she is kind of an iconin my fat queer femme community! I mean, she’s not evil for the sake of being evil – she was exiled by King Triton! And we don’t know for what but given that he’s muscle bound and all his daughters are slender, fatphobia probably had a lot to do with it. Of course she wants revenge! The Little Mermaid came out when I was in high school, so at the age when your peers are the cruelest about your weight (and sexuality) and you are the most insecure, the most easily traumatized – of course all the fat queer female-identified kids empathized with Ursula. Of course we did.
I was always 100% sure they’d had a torrid affair.
Me too!
There’s a deleted scene or an old script that says they’re brother and sister…
… all the more reason to exile her? Maybe?
I always wanted a Little Mermaid where Ariel ended up working together with Ursula to overthrow her tyrannical dad. Ursula is the best (and one of the most relatable) Disney villain!
He is, he is such a Bad Dad. He basically drove her into her misguided fancy for land-legs, to get away from him and his oppressive authority.
When I was a small child (who was easily frightened), the one scene in a Disney that stands out as the absolute scariest to me was the scene where Triton finds Ariel’s cave and destroys everything in a rage. I would absolutely go see the Sea Witch to get away from that too.
Agreed! In what universe is trashing your kid’s room acceptable parental behavior?
I am always excited to see stuff about Ursula. Her Wikipedia page is delightful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_(character)
And now I know that human-octopus hybrids have a name – Cecaelia. Thank you for that, I expect I will have a chance to use this knowledge.
The name Cecilia just got a lot more interesting…
She is my absolute favorite Disney villian because she is so true to herself. She could could be that hot young thing on the surface and get all the princes, but she CHOOSES to be the bad ass sea witch with attitude to spare. That amount of self acceptance and comfort resonated with my awkward young self.
Plus, she has the best song.
If you want to cross a bridge my sweet you’ve got to pay the toll
Take a gulp and take a swallow, go ahead and sign the scroll
(Flotsam, Jetsom boys I’ve got her now
The boss is on a roll..)
you pooor unfortunately soooooul!
*by memory, so may not be 100% accurate
As the current music director of a production of The Little Mermaid, I’m happy to report that your lyrics are spot-on! : D
She is the best. As a child I wanted a doll of her so badly, and all the stores had was Ariel, so my mother made me a sock puppet Ursula with button eyes and I played with her for years.
She inspired my first ever burlesque performance. Fat femmes for life!
So if Anonymous ever figures out how to teach squirrels to hack, we’re fucked.
…you just created an amazing storyline for Incredible Squirrel Girl.
So far, they have not joined forces with ravens. If that happens, human civilization IS OVER. Here’s my evidence…with a warning that the charred squirrel terrorist from this incident is illustrated in colour, at close range… http://www.yukon-news.com/news/squirrel-ignites-3…
That article is gold
Super Squirrel!
I really want to like cushion pacts – so much faster to apply than regular foundation! you can easily carry them around in your purse for touchups! – but both of the ones I’ve tried (from Etude House and The Face Shop) break me out. 🙁
Nicole, have you tried sheet masks yet? Anyone want to join me in a sheet mask recommendation thread?
I really like the Mediheal Dress Code masks because not only do they make me feel like I’m attending a ball at the court of Louis XIV, but they’re very brightening and moisturizing and they have so much essence that I can easily wear them for an hour. Mediheal is a pretty solid brand for masks. Ditto Mediental – I think the two are affiliated but I’m not sure.
The Benton Snail Bee masks are very good at clearing up redness but the Benton Snail Bee bottled essence irritated the hell out of my skin despite having a virtually identical ingredients list so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Face Shop Real Nature masks are a solid but not spectacular option. I like the acai, kelp and green tea ones the best.
I have a thousand sheet masks waiting for me to try. I will report back.
those dress code masks are EXCITING.
I looove Dr. Jart’s hydrating masks. I have started to notice fine lines when my skin gets sad and dry and those transform my skin for a few days!
I am so obsessed with sheet masks, I need to find good ones that cost like, $2 instead of $6.
Over the past few months I’ve noticed Asian beauty products showing up at my local Winners (that’s where I got the Mediheal and Mediental masks), and people have posted in r/asianbeauty that they’ve found stuff at Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and other discount department stores.
i really want everyone here loving kbeauty to go join /r/asianbeauty and talk there too. those ladies have sooo much knowledge.
also there is a podcast called snailcast by some kbeauty bloggers and their last episode was ALL ABOUT CUSHIONS
Past that my fave sheet masks are MBD Black pearl and bird’s nest, tosowoong green tea and propolis, skinfood peach sake pore mask, and some of the leaders ones
I just started trying sheet masks from Daiso! I really like the green tea one and the hyaluronic acid one.
“Think about how well-hydrated snails are!” ILU Nicole
Nicole you are so pretty! I am lazy but I love multi-step skin care, as it makes me feel like an old timey movie star and there is no better bathroom decor than a lineup of fancy bottles.
I am fucking obsessed with skincare.
I have two cleansers that I use, one when my skin is fine (Cetaphil) and one when my skin is pimply/hormonal (clay-based cleanser from Vichy, though next I’ll be trying Pixi Glow’s Mud Cleanser). I do try to wash morning and night, but sometimes I just use a hot washcloth in the morning and then splash cool water on my face. A hot wash cloth on your face is the most delightful experience in the world, and is an amazing way to wake up or wind down. Washcloths are also very cheap, effective, and gentle exfoliators.
At night I use First Aid Beauty’s Facial Radiance Pads which contain glycolic and lactic acid and do a great job of gently exfoliating and are making my face raddiiiiannnnttttttt. I try to use a mask once or twice a week, usually a hydrating mask when my skin needs it (sheet masks from Chinatown/internet), or something more exfoliating when my skin is looking clogged (REN Glycol Lactic Radiance Renewal Mask)
I use straightup rosehip seed oil as a serum, which is great for anti-aging, moisturizing, and has done a great job of making my skin look good. I also use Hydraluron which is super moisturizing and plumping.
In the morning I moisturize with belif’s The True Cream Moisturizing Bomb which is AMAZING and REFRESHING and might be my new OG moisturizer. I use Avene’s Skin Recovery Cream at night which is super, super moisturizing and thick, but once it’s done I probably won’t buy it again because I want something with retinol in it. I don’t always use sunscreen even though I know I should, but when I remember I use Clarin’s because it doesn’t break out my skin. There are a ton of really great sunscreen options and I will investigate them when I’m done with the Clarin’s.
I love trying new stuff but I do a lot of research before buying (reviews, ingredients) because I force myself to use it to the end unless it breaks me out. There are so, so many options so it can be overwhelming, but I usually look for recommendations from Caroline Hirons because she and her blog are the best. I’ve also learned that just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it will work, and there are a lot of great options in the drug store if you do a little research. That being said I typically spend the majority of my beauty budget on skincare, and use only drug store makeup because there’s so much good stuff.
A)your username is A++ B)OMG I love talking about my skincare. I follow a lot of what Caroline says, too. Dumping my Clarisonic for a stack of cheap washclothes changed my skin.
My current night routine is: Double cleanse with Clinique Take the Day Off Balm and either Perricone Nutrifiying Cleanser or Biologique Recherche Lait Vital (depending on how grimy I feel); then Biologique Recherche P50 1970 for my acid toner, then a heavy spritz of just plain old rose water. Every other day I use an AHA type lotion (I had been using Sunday Riley Good Genes but I’m almost out and bought a tube of Peter Thomas Roth 10% Glycolic Acid cream to try), and then on the other days I use Paula’s Choice 1% Retinol, then an eye cream (currently Clinique) and then a thick layer of moisturizer, currently the Biologique Recherche Creme Verte Espoir.
I also have a real mask obsession/problem. I use the BR Masque Vivant regularly, and I just bought myself the Peter Thomas Roth five mask set to try out.
Thanks! I saw it written in a bathroom at a bar and have adopted it as my own 🙂
Okay, tell me about Good Genes. I am hesitant to take the plunge with any Sunday Riley because a) it’s really “hip” right now, b) the ingredients aren’t, like, super unique compared to other $$$ brands, and c) all the products are $$$. BUT! I have heard reallllllly good things about Good Genes.
I am looking for better serums for both night and day, but I am totally overwhelmed by the all the options. And all the ones I’m really interested in are at least $150 and that is a serious investment for me and I don’t want to make the wrong decision!
That being said I am thinking about hopping aboard the Skinceuticals train! Heard such good things! Though the Paula’s Choice 1% retinol is cheaper–do you like it? I’ve had an actual retinol Rx before and might just do that if it’s more cost effective, but would you recommend Paula’s Choice over, say, Differin?
I really like Good Genes. I think it’s the best of the Sunday products. I definitely feel that my skin has gotten brighter and smoother over the course of the bottle. I do not think you would regret the purchase, if you overlook the ABSURD PRICE. Due to a generous SA at Sephora, I used Luna for about a month in sample form, and thought it was eh, plus the amount of artificial color in it bugs me. However, Good Genes is stupid expensive so now that I’m nearly out, I’m going to try the PTR 10%glycolic and see if it works as well before I spend another $105 on Good Genes. Ceramic Slip didn’t impress me, and I don’t like oils, so that eliminates the rest of the line. They also just came out with a cleansing balm, but it is, yes, $$$$$, and I doubt it’s any better than my holy grail, Clinique Take the Day Off balm. Seriously, that stuff is the best.
My skin doesn’t tolerate Rx retinoids, but I like the PC a lot. The Clinical also has Vitamin C and peptides and some other stuff in the mix, so I feel like while it’s pricier than generic tretinoin, it does a lot of things for a reasonable value.
I am fascinated by Skinceuticals. Once I work my way through all of my Biologique Recherche products (talk about expensive), I am going to seriously consider them.
Oh! Since I’m nearly out of my P50 1970, I just ordered the Paula’s Choice 2% BHA gel, which I’ve heard good things about and is very reasonably priced.
Also: Clarisonic was such a waste of my money! Yeah it made my skin look good, but I’ve gotten better results from acid peels, washcloths, gentle exfoliation, etc. Also mine stopped taking a charge after a year.
Okay, so saying I’ve spent half my life being kind of weirdly invested in Legolas/Gimli shipping – like since I first read LotR – is probably a) mildly off-putting b) blows my cover. But I gotta say it, that dude is a smoking hot Gimli fancast and I am here for it.
I got lectured once at Sephora for not doing anything special to my face but. If I do stuff, I get pimples and redness and hot spots – the woman at Sephora was like, keep going and that all resolves and your skin is gorgeous! Hard pass, ma’am; I am more hedonistic than I am vain and I am plenty vain. I will go on washing my face with water in the shower, putting tons of glasses of water in my belly, and occasionally taking to the sea, which has served me well so far.
Also I eat plenty of fat, truly believing that this helps my skin, hair, and nails, and also my mood, and also tastes amazing. Maybe I am closer to equally hedonistic AND vain than I thought.
I’m pretty firmly convinced that, had Ancel Keys had never gone into nutrition, the world (or at least America) would be a much happier, more content place.
Hey Toasties,
Long-time lurker here. My husband and I are headed to NYC in a week to see Hamilton (!). I’ve never been to NYC before. What are some (relatively inexpensive) must see sights and must eat foods?
That’s a really hard question to answer – there’s so much to see, do, and eat. What do you like?
Seeing-wise, I’m a historian, so old buildings are a favorite.
Eating wise, I’m game for pretty much anything. I especially love dessert, and I’ve also been told I need to have pizza and a bagel while I’m there.
Ooh, go to the Tenement Museum then. (Not free but awesome. ) https://www.tenement.org/
And while you’re down there, eat in Chinatown. My family’s favorite is this place, but it’s been a few years since I’ve been so I can’t vouch for it currently. http://greatnynoodletown.com/
Similarly, it’s been too long for me to have recs for the best bagels and pizza. I hope other Toasties can step in.
Seconded! The Tenement Museum is one of my favourite NYC places. The Eldridge Street Synagogue, which is close by, underwent a major reno a few years ago and is just a gorgeous building, so you could do a two-fer and then eat something delicious in the Lower East Side.
OH! Also, walk the Highline!
Definitely the Tenement Museum! And Russ and Daughters Cafe is close by, and very worth it–can be splurgy if you get a lot of the fancy seafood and caviar stuff, but you can also get a good brunch that’s not too pricey. The newly reopened Cooper Hewitt museum is also very cool, and the Morgan Library sometimes has interesting exhibitions and is nifty from the capitalist robber baron POV.
Tenament Museum and then Russ and Daughters! Twelve different kinds of lox! Many bagels!
If you are in the Village area (most of my food recs are based on my time as a broke NYU student), Percy’s Pizza on Bleecker St near 6th Ave has surprisingly great dollar slices. Bagel Bob’s on University btwn 9th and 10th is also good. Both are cash-only, but such is the peril of small shops.
OH ALSO Mexican Radio on Spring Street is a good spot with generous margaritas.
In the Village, gotta go to Mahmoun’s on MacDougal for the best (super cheap) shawarma, falafel, etc. Get the lentil soup! It costs like a quarter (slight exaggeration) and hits all the spots.
By LES / SoHo/ NoHo/ East Village, Caracas Arepa Bar on E 7th St is my favorite place to Treat Yoself that is not actually expen$$$ive. Get anything. It’s all amazing.
I love to take tourists on the Staten Island Ferry, which is free. If you’re up for a blustery time on the ferry, you can pack a picnic, a little bottle of whatever you like to drink, and have a nice midday. There’s a Dairy Queen (an exciting luxury in NYC!!) when you get to the SI side. There’s a really amazing carousel (not sure of the off-season hours) on the Manhattan side, too.
IKEA ferry is also great for this, and you can get a lobster roll in red hook when you’re done. (Umm, this suggestion was probably more applicable for not-January)
A lot of the best new pizza places are Neapolitan style but for a great classic new york pie, I’d go to John’s on Bleecker.
When I went to see it last year, we stayed in Midtown (I think). We went to 30 Rock, we hit up the Highline (a park built on an old elevated train track), took the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty, walked around Battery Park (Hamilton won’t abandon ship / Yo, let’s steal their cannons), saw the 9/11 memorial, walked past/sneered at Wall Street, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, wandered around Dumbo a little bit, walked back across the Manhattan Bridge, wandered through Chinatown and Little Italy, got dim sum at a huge dim sum hall in Chinatown that was amazing (can’t remember the name), ate gyros off a street cart, and tried and failed to get into the Comedy Cellar. Also, we went to Hamilton. It was a crazy-busy two days, but I definitely felt like we hit the touristy high points and had a really great time.
+1 for the Highline if the weather is decent.
Also, if you’re by Wall Street, check out Trinity Church. Old, pretty, and A.Ham, Eliza, and Angelica are buried there.
Oooh, old churches are my favorite thing to see! Will definitely have to do that
Even if the cemetery gate is closed you can see Hamilton ‘s grave very well from the Rector Street side.
+1,000,000 for Trinity Church!
The classic dim sum joint is Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street.
Was the dim sum place the Golden Unicorn? Because that place is AMAZEBALLS.
I really like Negril Village, a Caribbean restaurant down near NYU.
Also, the Rubin Museum of Art is a newer museum that has really great exhibits of art from the Himalayan region.
One of my favorite museums, if you’re up for getting out of the busy tourist neighborhoods, is the Museum of the Moving Image. It’s in Astoria, Queens, and it’s SO FUN. All kinds of cool movie technology, props, costumes, interesting special exhibits, etc. Sometime in the near future, they’ll add a ton of Jim Henson stuff to the permanent exhibit – his estate gave almost everything to the museum. http://www.movingimage.us/
The museum is relatively inexpensive, and takes about half a day to explore. I highly recommend spending either a morning or an afternoon there, and do lunch somewhere in Astoria, where you’ll find tons of good food!
The Met, Natural History Museum, and Brooklyn Museum are all suggested donation entry prices! They, obviously, can get very tourist-y, especially on weekends but with the Met in particular, there are lots of cool little side rooms and exhibits that are frequently near devoid of people. Also, I feel like the Brookyln Museum is often overlooked, but it has a great, more modern focused collection!
(Also dear god I miss the met so much I made a terrible mistake in moving away from it help).
YES TO THE MET. $5 and spend all day, or 5 minutes. So worth it. Esp. the smaller galleries, and I looooovveeee the European period rooms. Also the visible storage and the Meißner porcelain (that one may just be me tho). I’ve been lucky the last few times, but had a bad span over the last 2 years where they were consistently roping off some of the less popular galleries or closing exhibits for no reason (Frank Lloyd Wright and some of the American furniture, the Versailles cyclorama, visible storage, porcelain, etc). They are on probational good graces with me again after that.
Asian art is also A+ and very very empty of visitors.
Also the Cloisters! This probably isn’t the best season to visit, but it’s never a bad season, you know?
I am convinced that the period rooms are filled with ghosts that want to eat me, but the ones that aren’t right off the main hallway are always blissfully empty, so I face my fears for the precious quiet.
if you (unfortunately) find yourself in the Penn Station/Madison Square Garden area, New York Pizza Suprema is a delicious oasis of pizza-y goodness. Nothing fancy, but my favorite slice in Manhattan for sure.
I did not know this, and I find myself killing time near Penn way too often.
Thank you.
They also just opened a new food hall right above Penn, good to know for future killing time 🙂 http://www.thepennsy.nyc/
Caracas Arepa Bar in the East Village (or in Williamsburg). Great food, great prices. Our #1 go-to.
Also, Momofuku Noodle Bar, also East Village. SO YUM.
ETA Momofuku Milk Bar nearby is not fancy desserts but oh, the birthday cake truffles, and oh the compost cookies. I need a fainting couch for dessert thoughts.
Come up to Hamilton Heights and see A.Ham’s house! It’s in St Nicholas Park, around 141st St and Convent Ave, just take the A or D train uptown to 145th St and it’s an easy walk from there. You can also see where Aaron Burr lived towards the end of his life – the Morris-Jumel Mansion, which is also the oldest house in Manhattan. It’s around 160th St and St Nicholas Ave, which is a nice walk from Hamilton Grange if the weather’s not terrible. I haven’t been inside either place, but it’s obviously free to look at them from the outside and both are open to the public during normal museum hours.
Good places to eat/drink in the area: The Handpulled Noodle, At the Wallace, Tsion Cafe, The Edge, The Grange. (This is my neighborhood, if you couldn’t tell. I love it.)
I don’t have any suggestions for you but will be there in March for Hamilton so I am very interested in what everyone else has to say.
Wow, that Korean beauty routine has a lot of steps, which I’m not necessarily opposed to but I’m also not currently in a position to buy that many things at once. If I wanted to try just a couple of them for now, which ones are most important? Cleanser and moisturizer? Alternatively, does anyone sell a kit of all the steps but in cute little trial sizes?
Yes, cleanser and moisturizer first! Not that I am an expert, I am just speaking as someone who made a gradual transition to K-beauty products and the routine. When I first got started, I picked out a cleanser, a moisturizer, and an eye cream, then gradually worked other steps in. Not sure about the 10-step samples kit, but I know that both Sokoglam and Jolse send samples with your purchase. (Jolse is another great K-beauty site with a huuuuuge selection, although that does mean their offerings aren’t as carefully curated Sokoglam. But they do send a ton of samples!)
This one isn’t as important, but I love my toner. It doubles as a cleanser for when I am feeling real lazy, and the bottle lasted me 3-4 months of using it at least twice a day. Totally worth the initial sticker shock
do you use anything right now on your face?
Right now I use Cerave foaming face wash in the morning and at night, followed by the Cerave AM and PM moisturizers at the appropriate time. I had an Olay serum that I sometimes use around my eyes, but I ran out. My skin tends to be pretty oily and I am fairly zit-prone.
My skin isn’t oily and so I don’t want to send you down the wrong path but my thought would be that you are already using good products in the cerave stuff. So instead of switching those out, I would want to add in an AHA or BHA active. Both are going to give gentle chemical exfoliation and help your skin. I use the CosRX AHA and the CosRX BHA which are available on memebox and ship from the US and for free after 35. A lot of people also swear by the stridex BHA pads in the red box.
If you go over to /r/skincareaddiction or /r/asianbeauty I know the people there would have better suggestions for oily skin.
YES! I recommend Memebox for their $10 “Kbeauty starter” kit if you want to try all the things. HOWEVER Dont try everything at once, it can overwhelm your skin and cause breakouts! Try a new product ever 2 weeks if you can, wait two weeks, repeat. Phase things in slowly, our skin renews itself every 28 days.
Memebox periodically has starter skincare “boxes” they’ve assembled at discounted prices! https://us.memebox.com/our-boxes (not trial sizes, alas)
I love how I thought “oh, our readers will be so bored if I start a skin-related conversation,” and it turns out there is a PASSIONATE DESIRE by many of you to discuss your skin once in a while.
I am HERE for Korean skin care discussion. I got the K-beauty birchbox this month and read the slate article and now I can’t read enough about it.
Skin is so intimate and complicated and fussy – of course Toasties want to ramble with like minded people!
Plus now I’m wondering if Kbeauty stuff would work on the persistent eczema patches on my thighs… Hmmm.
After struggling with skin problems my entire life and being forced to become an expert on products, it’s really fun and gratifying to talk with other people about that stuff! Also it’s so cool to see how widely skin ranges – what works really well for some people is absolutely off the table for others AND NO ONE KNOWS WHY.
Talking about skincare and makeup is my favorite thing to and sooooo few of my friends IRL want to talk about it. Plus: you get amazing product recommendations in comments on beauty articles!!
It feels sort of like the old Hairpin, where it felt completely FINE and FEMINIST to talk make-up and skincare and cleaning as ordinary bits of a well-regulated life.
Also, I have just spent £20 on a very little bottle of Antipodes avocado and rosehip oil, which I think is magic. It smells beautiful, and it makes my skin smooth and plump and never greasy, and I love it, and I recommend it.
Half of me thinks, “oh, this is boring” and the other half is seized with a burning desire to share details of my own skin status/skincare habits. I don’t really understand this.
Poor Celine. Has anyone here seen her MAGNIFICENT wedding attire from 1994? It was truly divine… also bonkers:
QUERY: is this more or less bonkers than her attire from their Las Vegas vow renewal?
It is also important to note that this wedding featured strapping young men that carried her around on a palanquin
AND camels
Thank you for this important contribution.
Celine lives all of our dreams. Bless her.
Bonkers is absolutely the word to describe this. It’s magnificent.
They really loved each other. I feel so sad for her.
Yeah, I am too. They have always seemed to be such a loving couple.
I mean, he heard her voice for the first time when she was twelve and it made him CRY, so he mortgaged his house for the money to get her professional career started. That’s lovely.
My favorite snail secretion product right now is Benton’s Snail Bee High Content Essence. It is the BEST and, as the name implies, contains bee venom in addition to snail goop. I’ve heard great things about all of their products and really want to try their aloe gel next.
If you want to branch out from Soko Glam, I highly recommend the Face Shop, their in house brand is pretty good quality and the prices are really affordable. I love their sheet masks (I think you can also get these on Amazon for a ridiculously low price)
What I do NOT enjoy are sleeping masks…basically you slap the mask on before bed and leave it on until morning. I tried one last night and I was so nervous about getting the sticky gel on my sheets or pillow I didn’t sleep very well. The results were good (it was a soothing green tea mask and my skin did indeed feel soothed) but I am too neurotic about ruining my linens to try it again.
Mallory, thanks for shutting down that poly-hating neighbour. Like OF COURSE she told you that the boyfriend was a nanny, she doesn’t want to deal with you getting judgy all up in her face. And it gets really exhausting constantly having to explain your relationships and relationship values to everyone.
Same! My husband was reading or paraphrasing the good letters to me, an occasional practice of ours, and when I interjected “because she thought you would be judgy” he said “I’m judgy” when paraphrasing the lw. I mean, unless your neighbors are regularly having booze fueled orgies where they invite a whole marching band to play all night while they roast a goat in the yard, what your neighbors get up to is none of your business.
i think you mean…
“…unless your neighbors are regularly having booze fueled orgies where they invite a whole marching band to play all night while they roast a goat in the yard, and not inviting YOU, what your neighbors get up to is none of your business.”
’cause if my neighbors didn’t invite me to their marching band goat roast orgy, i’d be hella pissed.
ooo, now I know what I’m doing for my birthday this year.
True story: I used to work at a science centre. On the daily, one of the girls in the bug exhibit would take the out the giant snails and let them crawl over her hands to help with her eczema. It totally worked.
BRB quitting my job, applying at the science centre. (I don’t think ours has snails.)
There are snail Korean sheet masks and I have heard good things about them (but not tried them myself yet).
Glad to see the New York Times calling out Rick Snyder. Fucker.
Also Slate with the sassiest headline of them all “Flint Sends Overdue Notices to Residents Who Aren’t Paying for Their Water, Which Is Poison”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/13…
SKINS. I have mostly well-behaved skin, but I do get a smattering of acne and milia, and every few months I get one of those horrible blind zits that hurts like hell and won’t go away for weeks no matter what you do. I go to a dermatologist regularly for skin cancer checks (I’m in my 30s but at high risk) and on my last trip I asked their opinion on the Frankenzits. They put me on Retin-A cream and it has been the best. It does dry your skin out though! So I’m using argan oil (a $13 vial from Whole Foods) on top of that. My skin is so dewy and fresh and happy now. Good job, bod!
RETINOL YES. I have been using it for years and it’s fantastic. I know that when I first made the foray into skincare I was really tired of people saying “go to the dermatologist!” but it’s really the best decision you can ever make skinwise. I got treatment for my acne and then when I got skin cancer I made buddies with my derm and now I feel like I can take on anything!
I said this below, but yes!! My derm said basically “don’t bother dropping piles of cash on semi-pharmeceutical cosmetics for acne/wrinkles/etc, come to me & I will prescribe you the good stuff without the cosmetics markup”. Would recommend. And so glad to hear you’re doing well after skin cancer.
Retin-A cream is awesome! I mentioned this product up thread (we share a similar acne backstory, too!) and soooooo inexpensive compared to store brand skin creams. And same using an oil for counteracting the dryness; coconut for economy, rose hip if I want to go lux.
It is /so inexpensive/! I asked my derm if I should be buying anything special & she said “nah, don’t bother with cosmeceuticals” and it’s really true, at least for me. It works AND it’s cheaper, A+.
I couldn’t believe how cheap it was to buy (and bonus points for Retin-A sticking it to stupidly expensive “anti-wrinkle” creams!).
This really ought to go in the open thread, but that’s always wrong for my time zone so: I’ve been feeling a bit shit about work recently (not my job, just the concept of having to work for a living) but a small thing that I like about it: unlikely work friends. The person I’m closest to at work is a 40 year old father of three who I would not come into contact with outside of work in any way but we just get on. I would like to add that he is absolutely not creeping on me or anything. We’ll be going to Bangkok with work the week after next (see my actual job is pretty sweet as far as jobs go), and staying on an extra day – which we planned to do separately – and I’m actually looking forward to hanging out with him, as well as other random colleagues who’ll be about. If anyone wants to pick that up for the open thread – unlikely work friendships – you’re more than welcome.
Hooray for unlikely work friends! I totally hear you on being bummed out about having to work for a living (while also feeling a little guilty because at least I’m employed and make a decent wage at the moment).
I’ve been experiencing the downside of good work friendships — when they’re suddenly snatched away from you. i.e., layoffs. They started in December, taking the guy who worked across from me — we weren’t confidants, but I liked him very much, we worked so well together and had a way of smiling to indicate we were both in on the whole joke. He’d been there for a few years and then boom, told to go on the spot with zero notice.
Then it happened again on a much larger scale last week, taking the best friends I’d made since I moved to the region less than a year ago, along with basically everyone I had a good working relationship with and leaving behind the ones I don’t know so well or who are more distant. And there’s the wonderful chance the whole company’s going down the drain, and at least I have time to look for somewhere new, but it’s with the reminder that it could all happen somewhere else, there are no guarantees in life, etc.
The one silver lining is that at least they’re still in the area, so it’s feasible to meet for drinks and stuff (unlike everyone I left behind in Houston).
I have a coworker that for ages I didn’t get along with at ALL and thought was obnoxious (to the point where we had an argument and I emailed HR about it). But then after a few weeks of polite-but-distant work relations we started chatting and now we get along! It’s made the nights we work together so much better.
my skin is pretty great already, like one of my few reliably good features, but I bought the magic eyeshadow, Nicole. I trust in Charlotte.
Poor Sansa. My late dog moped for days after having to say goodbye to his new dog friend, Lola. We had escaped the power outages due to Hurricane Sandy and we bunked with friends with a wonderful, older lady dog who was soooo sweet to my Rusty and they napped on a couch together, in the sun, only to occasionally wake up to bark at either nothing or the mailman outside. He was so happy and then despondent when we finally came home. My one consolation is that they are now both in heaven (or whatever) and are both snuggling and sunning and barking at mailmen and everything together.
*sniffle*
My sister’s rescue boxer has a best friend that looks almost exactly like him that they dogsit sometimes and it’s amazing. He’s great with their other dog of course but the two rescue boxers just seem to have this bond that nobody can touch. Dogs are so special and amazing.
Possibly silly question, but how do you start having a skin routine? Like, is it just a matter of willpower and forcing yourself to wash/moisturize/etc every single day? I’ve tried (either because I wanted to or because my mom insisted on it) to be good about taking care of my skin multiple times, but nothing ever stuck for longer than a month or so. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like maybe I ought to try starting again, although my skin also looks fairly good (but maybe if I actually did something, it would look better, who knows)
It probably doesn’t help that, if given the choice between a) waking up early/staying up late enough to wash/tone/moisturize and b) sleeping more, I will almost always choose b). They call it ‘beauty sleep’ for a reason, maybe.
following because reasons
Seriously, start with a goal of “I will at a minimum wipe my face with a makeup wipe 5 nights a week”. Start small. Leave them by your bed. Don’t aim for every night, just aim for most nights. In my case, it expanded from that to “ok, I’m going to try to wash my face with an actual cleanser and warm water a few nights a week”, and then “ok, I bought this AHA cream, let’s try to use this a few nights a week” and over time I liked the results enough that I have an absurd six step routine that I do nearly every night.
Some nights, though, I say fuck it and use my handy bedside wipes.
I will say that I can do my skincare routine literally while still mostly asleep, and it takes about five minutes to do all the steps. So in the beginning, it seems monumental but over time and by being kind to yourself about compliance, it can just become a Thing You Do.
ALSO. You don’t NEED a six or ten step routine. If it doesn’t work for you, stick to what does – cleanse, moisturizing treatment, done.
so if my skin care routine consists of “warm water in the shower, rub face with towel upon exiting shower, exfoliate when remember to do so, moisturize when skin begins cracking” and I still don’t break out and people still compliment my skin
then
that’s okay???
STUPID BEAUTY INDUSTRY MAKING ME FEEL GUILTY MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE
Friend, if you are happy with your skin, don’t let them convince you otherwise. You do you. Maybe one day you wake up and think “I am unhappy with my skin for X Reason, maybe I should investigate a solution”, but until then, if you’re content with what you are doing, and content with your skin, don’t let the Beauty Industrial Complex tell you it’s inadequate.
Literally my only comment is, SPF. But I say that to everyone. SPF is the number one preventative measure any of us can take.
Seconding SPF so hard. Minimum 30.
Enjoy your carefree skin for the rest of us. For reals.
Sincerely, the girl whose acne was so bad when she was 11 she got sent to the nurse for fear it was chicken pox
The only thing that works for me is starting simple with a good product and tying it to something I already do daily. For example if you wanted to take EnchiladaTaco’s suggestion and use a makeup wipe every night I would try buying nice makeup wipes that smell really good and then physically putting then on top of something you use every night like toothpaste, a contact case, etc.
Everyone is different, but what got me started was having/identifying an actual skin issue -> being determined to solve it & NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. With experimentation I learned very quickly what DOESN’T work for me, & Youtube makeup gurus eventually led me to what does!
Echoing what EnchiladaTaco said that exhausting multi-step routines aren’t always necessary, what’s important is what works for you! My routine is 2 products: In the morning after I brush my teeth I rinse my face with water, pat dry, then use my products so everything is done at once. Evenings I don’t do anything unless I wore makeup that day, & I don’t tend to apply moisturizer bc my skin always decides to overcompensate with oil when I do. Simple!
I just read The Power of Habit and one of the things the author mentioned was that there has yet to be an “a-ha” moment around the regular application of sunscreen that makes habit-forming natural. I think skin care routines fall into the same zone of difficulty, and am trying to find cues that make it easy to be consistent, but it’s hard! I wish I had a friend who would train me with one of those little clickers you can use to make your cat turn on a lamp or whatever.
My sort of goal for the year is to take better care of my skin. I have very sensitive skin so it wax always just easier to do nothing than to do something that would make my skin break out. But now that I’ve found something that works for me, I find that I just WANT to use it because it makes me feel better.
Also, I wish I had started using lotion on my face and neck in my twenties.
I echo the small goals! I also like to have one of my daily cleanses with my shower, since I am washing everything else already and also don’t always get hot water in my bathroom sink.
I have been a lot more intentional about the products I use, and am willing to shell out a couple extra more dollars for a product after doing a lot of research. This makes me super excited to use whatever things I just added/replaced in my routine. Once the honeymoon phase wears off I will continue to use the product just so I can finish the bottle out of.. spite I guess?
I mean, I wouldn’t worry about it If you are happy with your skin, especially since it is pretty easy to choose a product that you turn out to be allergic to or it dries your face out or whatever. I didn’t do anything with my face till I turned 30, and that is because my skin changed and I was unhappy with it. Even so, I do not Do much beyond washing it at night and wearing a lightweight unscented moisturizer. Please do take off your eye makeup though!
I knew if I asked for advice, Toasties would provide. Thank you all!
I think this really depends on how old you are. Reading the comments here, I have a feeling that I’m a Toastie in her dotage (ie, 50s), so I would never dream of not washing my face or using products (love Eminence! https://eminenceorganics.com/us). But you know, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I never wore makeup and I guess I washed my face at night, but I can’t really be sure 🙂
Yeah, I’m 34 and wear (any) makeup about once a month, so I just really don’t think about it much.
I’d also say maybe doing a month or two of a subscription box might be a good way to start, if you can afford it. When I did that I had so much fun trying out the various samples that it made me want to wash my face every night so I could put on the new fancy cream, or whatever.
But also, definitely if you’re already happy with your face, you don’t need to do anything to it! (except sunscreen)
If it helps at all, my skincare routine is streamlined to be 90% nighttime stuff and 10% morning stuff, and the morning stuff is just slapping on some moisturizer, full stop. I do also wear makeup, which I apply in the morning but don’t consider skincare; kind of the opposite, actually. But yes, I’m 100% with you on sleeping in.
One of my resolutions this year was Have A Skincare Routine, because I’m 30 and freckled and can’t just use Pond’s every few days for the rest of my life. Honestly, what’s helped me stick to it (uh, for two weeks at least) is only buying things I’m really excited to use and not going full ham on the routine. I bought a sleep pack that sounded delightful and had great reviews. I bought a CeraVe retinol moisturizer because r/skincareaddiction made it sound like magic. I bought some sheet masks after a friend told me how amazing they are and showed me before/after photos. Etc.
But I don’t do it all at once. I am trying to firmly make myself cleanse my face every night (still with Pond’s, but now nightly instead of… whenever), but other than that I’m using things on a very loose schedule, mostly when I’m like, hey that thing! It is exciting, let’s do it! Which I kid myself is better than nothing.
Speaking of skincare – has anyone tried the Glossier products? They don’t ship to me in Canada but my in-laws are snowbirds and I was thinking of getting some shipped to their place in Arizona – worth it or nay??
Eh. I’ve tried them all. They’re essentially knockoffs of other products. The cream is Embryollise, the skin tint is a really watery tinted moisturizer, the balm is aquaphor, and their new face wash is apparently a direct rip off of a La Roche Posey face wash they recommended last year. But, it’s not super expensive, the packaging is cute, and it’s fragrance free, so I mean, there are worse things to waste your money on. I think their stuff does what it says, but it’s just not the breakthroughs they claim.
I’ve purchased both of the masks when they were having a black Friday sale – they are nice but not earth shattering. The moon mask was my favorite – definitely saw a plumping/brightening effect with it, and it smells lovely and soothing. I have a lot of redness, especially in the winter, and the moon mask was an upgrade from my usual technique of slathering cold yogurt on my face. The galaxy greens one (supposed to be for drawing stuff out and shrinking your pores) is nice but I didn’t really see much of a difference.
I also got a sampler of their moisturizer in my package, and really liked it. I will probably consider getting the full size when I’m out of what I’m using currently.
Radiant Toasties, what works for you in dealing with acne? I have had blemishy skin for ages and have never found something that will clear it up (aside from antibiotics, but clear skin wasn’t worth being constantly nauseated). I’ll try anything once, tbh.
Paula’s Choice 2% BHA liquid is pretty awesome and no-bullshit. Ugh, it looks like the price has doubled in the past year, though. :/
yeah, I’ve been using that since the summer and my skin has been a lot clearer. Not perfect obviously, but it’s better than it was.
I got mine for $10 thanks to a sale and coupons – I’m really not looking forward to paying full price when I run out 🙁
Paula’s Choice has a BHA option for “body” at a lower price. I use it on my face.
What’s the difference between that and a cheaper one? I’ve been using an Alba 2% BHA and it’s not helping.
BHA plus Retinols. I also use an AHA in rotation with the Retinols. I had a horrible allergic reaction to the antibiotics and now avoid all oral acne meds like the plague.
If you can see a dermatologist, clindamycin. It is the only cream that works for me.
Feel free to ignore this if you’ve already tried it (I haven’t)
I read that studies showed putting a clean towel on your pillow every night improved acne (I imagine in conjunction with a treatment plan). Mostly because its clean and there less bacteria being smushed into your face (and its easier to change a towel every night than pillow cases I guess?)
I’ve been thinking about buying a week’s worth of pillowcases and swapping them out every night, especially since I noticed that I’m so greasy I leave marks on my sheets after a week–not only from my face but also my bare shoulders. Gaaah.
For the last… 15?… years, I have sworn by my simple routine. Use a wash that contains benzoyl peroxide (I use mine at night when I shower), and use a toner that contains salicylic acid (I use mine in the morning). Same two basic ingredients as many fancy acne-care lines. The trick – and it’s not really a trick – is that you need to STICK WITH IT for at least a month. Adjust the rate of use or time of application as needed. I’ve turned a handful of friends onto this only to be quietly thanked two-three months later. It’s the only thing I swear by.
Tea tree oil is good for spot treatment, but tbh the only thing that really worked for me over the long term was Accutane, which has its own problems.
If you’re down to go to the dermatologist, they can work with you to clear that up! I always had bad acne and it took about a year to pin down a routine that worked, but now I have two prescriptions (benzoyl peroxide/erythromicin and retinol) and I’m really happy with the way my skin looks! I get a zit now and then but no more horrible cystic acne or neverending breakouts.
Retin-A cream prescribed by your physician can be a godsend; costs pennies compared to store brands, it lasts forever (my 30 gram tube is still going strong one year later) but beware the strength! I’m currently at 0.05% and only use it every 3rd day or so because otherwise I’d be a red, flaky mess. I combine it with an oil, such as coconut (for economics) or rose hip (sooooo lux). My teenage skin was so acne prone I was prescribed tetracycline and now, as a woman of A Certain Age, I still get the occasional bad breakout on the corners of my mouth and chin area but this skin routine seems to keep everything in check.
I’m currently trying to deal with cystic acne, mild rosacea, and hyper sensitive skin. I also want to spend as little money as possible. I check everything to Paula’s choice reviews (I don’t know if the ph stuff is bs, but it feels reassuringly science-y). My routine:
Cerave foaming cleanser daily & oil wash once a week in the winter (vitamin e from trader joes)
Benzoyl peroxide spot treatment
Salicylic acid & Retinol (I’m using the instanatural vitamin c serum from amazon now, I’ve used Paula’s choice bha and prescription retinols in the past, they all have similar results)
Cerave AM/PM moisturizers
Cerave products are the best, highly recommend if you are using a bunch of drying acne meds!
The only thing that worked for me in the end was retinol products from the dermatologist. I did find them quite drying so I had to totally revamp the entire rest of my routine (which had been formulated for my formerly oily skin), but it’s been worth it, and I’ve reached a nice balance of manageably dry, essentially blemish-free skin.
FISTBUMP.
Benzoyl peroxide does clear me up a bunch but it’s such a hassle (it bleaches EVERYTHING, even after it’s dry on my face, plus I get dry and flaky, yes even at lower percentages, UGH) that I’ve quit using it.
Someone here once mentioned Curology.com, which is a subscription service for Rx stuff. I need to take my photos and send them in, because I’m hoping to get Retin-A.
But I’ve gotten to the point where, if I had decent insurance, I’d just say “fuck it” and do a round of Accutane.
I did the acne.org regimen for most of a year and although it was a hassle, it broke the cycle that was causing a lot of my acne – I would find myself touching my face because of all the blemishes, which of course made things worse. That got me 75% of the way there (and bleached a lot of bedding). Then I quit dairy for unrelated reasons and found that did the rest of it. Now I still will get a pimple occasionally before my period but I just use plain cheap cetaphil morning and night, with almond oil (just from the cooking section) at night and a light sunscreen in the morning. Plus I did some at home peels to address the scars.
I have no skin routine, but I wanted to thank everyone on the open thread several weeks back who recommended Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream, because that stuff is indeed magic.
Oooh, I love that stuff. Keep some in my car.
Nicole!`! come visit us at /r/asianbeauty. it’s a very nice and respectful subredit dedicated to asian skincare products
During multiple visits to Aesop during my Australia trip it took the greatest feat of willpower of my life to not spend three months salary on their skin care products. I bought a tube of hand balm for my cat sitter and he has NO IDEA how close he came to never knowing about it.
I suspect an all-Aesop regimen would make my skin glow like Elizabeth Bathory’s, but it would have to be a homeless Elizabeth Bathory’s as it would be either buy product or pay rent.
During my Christmas holidays I went to a department store that had Aesop soap in the washrooms and it smelled amaaaazing. I wanted to buy a bunch of stuff but I would also have needed to buy a second suitcase and that deterred me.
Later on during the trip I saw a standalone Aesop shop in Zurich and it was all shiny and futuristic and almost intimidating.
I didn’t go in because I didn’t even want to know how much Aesop costs in Switzerland where a glass of orange juice can run you 11 CHF.
You could lose a whole day just looking at their store design pages (at least it would be free).
http://taxonomyofdesign.com/#!/
Aesop is so pretty looking! I went into one of their stores because duhhh they look amazing. However, I was reading the ingredients lists to a few of their products and they’re kinda… normal? Like, I didn’t see any ingredients/formulations that were very different from a lot of mainstream products. If you’re after the results and not the beautiful packaging, I suggest looking at the ingredients on their website and then finding similar stuff in the drugstore for cheaper!
You are very probably correct! It’s their fragrances that tempt me the most – I find a lot of products have scents with odd chemical undertones but Aesop products smell glorious to me.
Oh, my god, their geranium body wash. We were talking about what we’d buy if we won the lottery, and honestly, I’d buy Aesop geranium body wash and some tiny beetroot and goats’ cheese tortellini from Waitrose, because I can’t justify the price of either of them without being a wild millionaire.
I bought the geranium body balm, somehow convincing myself that the $37 tube was a more virtuous and thrifty purchase than the $103 bottle. Aesop must have figured out how to mist their stores with pheromones that send all rational thought packing.
My husband is Australian and my in-laws regularly send me Aesop products for my birthday and Christmas. I married well. (And yeah, that geranium lotion is marvelous!)
…I just realized that the above comment could easily read as me being smug about marrying into a wealthy family. Oops. What I meant is that my MIL and SIL are super generous people who spend too much on skincare products on my behalf, and that I am super grateful because holy God are Aesop products exorbitant.
Oh GOD korean skincare is the best. I love my Mizon snail gel. I put that shit on everything– sunburns, hangnails, zits, all of it. I wish I had the discipline for a 12-step skincare routine, but generally anything much beyond cleansing once a day + a suncreen/moisturizer combo makes me turn bright red for some reason.
LONDON TOASTS. Please please please go to Bennett’s Cafe and Bistro because the owner is a Good Person who deserves our support.
Yes, I shall go all the way to York for a cup of tea. Mate I won’t even go North of Kings Cross if I don’t have to.
(I actually love their response and I will totally look them up if I’m ever in York)
Ah drat, I didn’t look deep enough into that. Although I have to say that York is ASTONISHINGLY beautiful and probably my favorite place in the North.
Hold the phone. Just wanted to observe that there are FIVE pages of comments to the Worst Ex request. WE ARE AMAZONIAN SURVIVORS.
And yes, I would like to second the request to Mallory, because a sprinkling of hilarious deleted comments is just the ticket for wringing out our mental filthy laundry on this new and glorious morning of our commisery.
5 pages!!!
#733 and counting, including replies…
If we followed the Chinese calendar we could just consider this month to be a continuation of 2015. Perhaps it will be better after February 8?
For skincare… I could talk about this for HOURS and my favorite place to read about it for hours is the blog No More Dirty Looks. It’s all about “green beauty” with skin and makeup recs. But the best part is they have a series called Morning Routine and people write in and tell you their skin type/city/age/hair type and then what products they love and use every day. I’ve found so many great brands from it!
My personal favorites are True Nature Botanicals and One Love Organics. I’m happy to expand if anyone is curious about either of them/particular products, but if I just started writing about each thing I love it would be legit 5 paragraphs.
I would like to solicit humidfier recs if anyone has some. I’m curious about the one from Muji because it’s visually nice and quiet, but it’s a bit $$ and I’d love to not spend that kind of money to make my air more skin friendly right now.
I have this one: http://www.amazon.com/Crane-Adorable-Ultrasonic-H… and I like it.
The Crane ones come in different animal shapes, and I’ve seen them between $30 and $50.
I have this one. http://www.amazon.com/Safety-1st-Ultrasonic-Humid…
I did a bit of research into different types of humidifiers, and I don’t remember all of the details, but in the end, I decided I wanted an ultrasonic one, because they didn’t have filters for me to change, they had low power consumption, and they ran quietly. Oh, and I was sort of worried about getting one that produced steam by boiling water because my cat is an idiot, and I could see her getting hurt by that.
I also figured out that for whatever reason, humidifiers marketed for babies’ bedrooms tend to be cheaper than other humidifiers. I bought my humidifier on Amazon, but if I remember correctly, they also stock it in the Baby section of Target for basically the same price.
Mine does run very quietly, and for the most part, I am very happy with it. I will say that if I set it on high, the mist doesn’t diffuse and rise that well. I think maybe it’s because it’s just really tiny water droplets instead of steam? But on high, some of the mist will end up falling back to the ground, and the area around the humidifier will get a bit damp. On medium, it works perfectly well, though.
Look at that sweet puppy face! *squee*
I am not shameless enough to collar strangers, but I do often brag about how hot I look just to get my friends to join in…(and I am not even a little ashamed about it).
But to pay it forward: You are pretty! SO PRETTY. There’s probably a witch somewhere just plotting against you because of it.
SKINS!
i just watched the newest episode of It’s Always Sunny and all this skin-talk just reminds me of Dennis’s real reason for wanting to be a vet: access to animal skins.
“There’s no denying that the skins are fascinating.”
Adhgosdjglkadjglkdjgla Dennis and his obvious murderer-ness!!!!
I LOVE IT
“Dee, I swear you would be of more use to me if I skinned you and turned your skin into a lampshade, or fashioned you into a piece of high-end luggage.”
“You say another word and I swear to God I will dice you into a million little pieces and put those pieces in a box, a glass box that I will display on my mantel.”
I KNOW IT’S WRONG BUT I LOVE IT
There are SO MANY TIMES when I want to make IASIP references around here but then I don’t because I feel guilty about how it’s the most anti-feminist, offensive, terrible show ever. And I cannot. Stop. Loving. It.
it’s all those things, but also, eh. it’s all SO over-the-top that it blows straight past my ability to be offended and i just giggle with abandon.
i’m sure there are people who really dislike it and i would never try to change their minds, but in the meantime, i love it and i refer to The Gang as if they are my actual friends.
so there are at least two of us. i’ll bet there are more.
And that’s part of why I love it so much – all the offense is very over the top and exaggerated, PLUS, none of the characters ever get rewarded for being awful. Like, they’re all losers who never get what they want. That’s how I defend the show to outsiders haha.
They might be the most dysfunctional adults to exist on TV right now. They can’t even do something like go out to dinner without creating a catastrophe. And heaven forbid they have to interact with anyone not in the Gang, that always ends badly.
Skincare! I have THE WORST oily skin and hair, and I’m horribly prone to acne. The only thing I’ve found that really works is cinnamon and clove soap- any other soap I’ve tried just makes it worse.
What is the best skin treatment for old dark acne scars, and the two recurring cystic pimples that the retinol couldn’t eliminate? I have dark scars on my chin from a combo cystic acne/impetigo attack a few years back and I desperately want them gone.
I haven’t been able to really get rid of my own dark scars, though I’ve been trying to use the Neutrogena Rapid Tone Repair lotion I bought (it has retinol and I don’t remember what else). I’d heard good things about it.
What’s been working for my cystic acne lately – and I’m a little paranoid that typing it out is going to curse me – Tanda Zap + hydrocortisone and/or smashing up an Ibuprofen to make into a paste.
Oh my god, sorry for the late reply, I missed the email notif somehow! Thanks for the tip and I’m going to try the products you suggested.
(Ibuprofen, really? I’d heard of doing it with an aspirin but not ibuprofen!)
Eep, all of this beauty talk is making me feel like I am not trying hard enough!
I’ve been using Aveeno foaming acne wash and sensitive skin lotion (with the occasional benzoyl peroxide cream application) daily for years; I get hormonal breakouts 2x a month and if you look closely my pores are kind of scraggly, and I get dry patches in winter…but I can usually cover the worst with makeup and feel reasonably fine?
But if I invest in finer skin products, will my skin suddenly be magical?? Argh I’m so bad at this (I also buy drugstore makeup and my friends are always horrified as they apply their minerals…am I being awful to the earth as well as myself with these cheapo products?) (((but not my wallet tho))) 😐
I’ve found that nice skin care is just as varied /personal as cheapo stuff, just with a lot more potential for spending a lot on something you end up not liking. If you want to get into it, I definitely recommend going to Sephora and getting lots of samples! You might find something that works amazing for you that feels worth the money, but some of it will probably seem really run of the mill or not agree with your skin (hate u Clinique).
Sansa looks how my Elder Niece acts when I’m leaving after a visit–taking after her dad, who once when our nana was leaving could only cope via sulking and saying “Well, good. I’m tired of you.”
“He threw dinners; he ordered every dessert on the menu if you couldn’t decide.”
I just can’t get over how lovely a thing this is to say about a person.
You’re pretty.
I went to Celine Dion’s wikipedia entry and ended up on a youtube rabbit hole.
Her first hit song was in 1981 when she was TWELVE. Good lord. I mean, not a lot of people listened to it outside of Quebec, but it did really well there, and she had a whole bunch of Francophone hits until she crossed over into English music in 1990.
Anyway, that first song is really charming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPW7v8lZBi8 It’s called “Ce N’était Qu’un Rêve,” and she was a hell of a lot more confident on stage than I would have been at her age. And her voice was already pretty damn impressive.
She also did her first Christmas album that year. I….I actually really want to try to find it if I can??
Sometimes I consider starting up a skin routine, but I have dermatillomania that focuses on my face and a) I’d be touching my face all day anyway which would probably just reverse any good effects and b) frankly, there’s only so much I can do to make pockmarked face look nice. Ah well. I’ll live vicariously through other people’s nice skin! And indeed, you look lovely.
OMG I also got SO INTO K-beauty this past week and all I want in the world is more snails to put on my face. MORE SNAIL. (They don’t hurt the snails, it’s okay.)
Sulwhasoo is so good and so damn expensive – i also am slowly dipping my toe into K-Beauty and oh my god the difference after using just toner ALONE.
Laaaaaaate late late to this, but I really want to share my skin-care secret! Before this winter I was just using whatever generic moisturizer I could find at drugstores, because spending more than $20 on moisturizer seemed ridiculous to me. I was really liking No. 7 products and still use them at night.
HOWEVER.
One of my coworkers used to work in magazines, and when they had their annual “cleaning out our beauty supply closet” sale for employees only, she had one of her old contacts sneak her in and basically threw everything she could find into a bag, then shared the wealth with us. (She deserves a crown of many jewels.) One of those products was a little bottle of something called Revaléskin Intense Recovery Treatment, and it is a miracle. It costs $143 for an OUNCE, which is bonkers, but it really works. I have oily skin, but in the winter time my entire forehead looks like it has a really awful flaky skin disease… two small pumps of this stuff gets rid of it entirely. And now I’m scared of running out because I cannot imagine another winter without it.
Oh, BTW, if anybody else like me just suddenly found out about k-beauty from that Slate article, you should know that Slate article is some SHADY SHIT. The academic beauty bloggers that are quoted? Were never contacted. The woman working up her own skincare line? Friend of the author. http://fiftyshadesofsnail.com/2016/01/07/casual-t… is one response. (Also that is an awesome blog, as are the other ones she links to.)
YES I got into it because of that article and fell down the rabbit hole…including reading the response to it that the bloggers wrote. Shit article, but so glad I got into KBeauty!!! (See my Loooong response below)
NICOLE!!!!! K-BEAUTY LOVE!! Seriously I got into it about 2 weeks ago and have read approximately 2 hours PER DAY regarding this topic ever since, have purchased Kerry and Coco’s book off Amazon (SECRETS OF KOREAN SKINCARE) and have started a skincare LOG (from someone who has never been able to keep a diary past page 2) AND am starting slowly ever so slowly to try to fix my Dehydrated oily/combo acne prone skin. It’s AMAZEBALLS. And to think I never considered the pH of my cleanser before, or gasp, washed my face AT NIGHT TOO!
To start, let me please highly recommend Jude’s post on using this as a form of self-care during depression which might have been the tipping point for me getting into all of this. http://fashionista.com/2015/05/korean-skincare-de…
I now follow her blog, as well as the blog of my other skincare type twins, Snow White and The Asian Pear, and Fanserviced-B. I also enjoy the Skin and Tonics Blog, and another snail-centric blog Holy Snails.
Things I enjoy about KBeauty – The ritual; the time alone with just myself for fucking once instead of being surrounded by people every hour of every day; the nice smells and feels of the product plus the cute packaging; the time and intense research that these bloggers have done which makes me feel like when I finally purchase a product I have exhausted all other options and have settled on the best choice for ME; that little bit of self-care that does feel pretty great; the price points can be very reasonable and affordable; and the SCIENCE behind it!! Snail secretions FTW!
Things I’m using now!
First cleanse (PM only) – Banila&Co Clean It Zero.
Second cleanse – CeraVe Foaming Facial Cleanser because it has a great pH level and I could get it fastest for now. Although I’m hoping to switch to the CosRX Low-ph cleanser next month.
Active – Curology prescription because Snow and Tracy wrote such a good damn review of the service that I’m trying it. AND because I couldn’t get a appt to the dermatologist I emergency-saw before my wedding in 2014 and I’D LIKE MY ACNE TO DISAPPEAR NOW K THANX. It is pretty awesome to have an excuse to take ugly selfies of my skin and send them to my Doc who then replies back to me. Thanks, internet!
Toner – Dickinsons Witch Hazel because that’s what I had an have not experienced anything bad from it yet. Looking to change this too, eventually. Also have sample and using a little of Innisfree Green Tea Balancing Skin Toner.
SHEET MASK FUN – I’m dying to get my hands on some silk or Taiwanese ones which are currently fawned over, BUT in the mean time I had a TonyMoly Tomato one that was delightful and very brightening. Very thankful I live in a major metro area with Korean spas within an hours drive, and Korean/Asian grocery markets fairly close too. Sheet masks used once a week or as needed.
Hydrator – CeraVe Moisturizing Lotion but I’ve also been trying the samples of Innisfree Green Tea Balancing Lotion (great amount of moisture – not overwhelming) Innisfree Green Tea Balancing Cream (almost too heavy – nighttime use only!)
Sunscreen – For daytime use only as my prescription will make me photosensitive. Biore KAO JAPAN AQUA RICH Sarasara SPF50+/PA++++ 50g Sunscreen – Holy shit this is nothing like American sunscreen. Trust me there’s a reason every blogger out there mentions this one at least once. AND it’s on Amazon!!
Occlusive – Not at this time although I”m looking at adding in a sleeping pack soon to combat our dry air in our bedroom.
Recommended online retailer – MemeBox – Super cute boxes (including a great $10 sample box!) and comparable prices to Amazon, especially since the shipping is free at $30 and often free shipping from Amazon will take an additional month. Unless it’s on Prime, I’m planning on getting most of my products from MemeBox, but Tracy from Fanserviced-b does an awesome blog round up of online Korean retailers here: http://www.fanserviced-b.com/about/personal-korea…
Plus there are even more that have popped up in the mean time since that post!
SUPER RECOMMENCED Snow’s post on beginner mistakes. It’s because of her post and a few others that I’m trying to add in a new product every two weeks so I can identify my skin triggers and actively avoid them!! I REALLY wanted to toss everything out and start over but then I’d never know which of the 5 new things I’ve put on my skin bothered it. Slow and steady, I keep telling myself. http://www.snowwhiteandtheasianpear.com/2015/11/t…
Best beginner blog post: http://www.snowwhiteandtheasianpear.com/p/recomme… OR the How to Build Your own Korean Skincare Routine post from Fiddy at Fifty Shades of Snail http://fiftyshadesofsnail.com/why-asian-skin-care…
Both are excellent resources!! Ok now I’m done with this super long comment I”m just SUPER EXCITED ABOUT SKINCARE.
I am also SO SUPER EXCITED! And it is KILLING me not to slap everything on because I just got a shipment from Memebox AND today my Shark Sauce is coming in the mail. Must wait! Must test individually! I tried the IOPE cushion compact but it is… maybe too light for me in N21? Which is weird because I don’t think they make Korean people whiter than me and it would be really weird if they only make two shades and one is even fairer than I am; pretty much they don’t make any people whiter than me. I’m not just white as in ethnicity, I’m white as in Pantone swatch; if anything I thought this was going to be far too dark but I decided to try it anyway because Memebox’s return policy looks pretty good and everybody says the coverage is so sheer that a huge range of people can wear it. I dunno, I’ll need to look at it in the sunlight.
Cannot stop enthusiasm. Cannot stop touching awesome snail face.
YES YES I share your enthusiasm!!! SO HARD just to wait plus my friends and family are all getting sick of me talking about it. I’ve put approximately a dozen things in my cart in amazon a day and then take them all out 2 days later based on a different post…I’ve also started listening to the podcast since I can’t read while I drive…. What is WRONG with me?! I love KBeauty!!