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ex·fo·li·ate

/eksˈfōlēāt/



verb



(of a material) come apart or be shed from a surface in scales or layers.

“the bark exfoliates in papery flakes”

cause (a surface) to shed material in scales or layers.

“salt solutions exfoliate rocks on evaporating”

wash or rub (a part of the body) with a granular substance to remove dead cells from the surface of the skin.

Do you crave that perfect, velvet-smooth, low-effort glowing skin as much as I do? I’m trying to get back into a good skin routine after my most recent depressive episode. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to getting great skin. Once you’re off-routine, you’re kinda boned for a while. But a girl can try, dammit. Enter the parade of exfoliants. (It’s not like we’re into a season that’s dry as hell, too. What could possibly go wrong?)

I’ve recently seen that a friend of a friend uses 20% concentration glycolic-acid pads every single day. And, when I was asking my acne-prone stepson what his routine is, he told me and then said “It’s working if it hurts like hell, right?”

Yeeeeeeeeesh. Nope. If it stings AT ALL, you need to back away from the exfoliant products for multiple days, and strategically apply a good moisturizer.

Conventional wisdom is coming around to the fact that you can exfoliate too much, and the result is a damaged moisture barrier. (Also known as the “horny layer,” she giggled immaturely.)

What’s a wrecked horny layer look like? Well, it makes your skin look like Steve Bannon’s skin.

Yuck. Consider yourself warned.

I mean, there’s also the fact that being a raging alcoholic and a racist hater ages you ugly. Drink plenty of water, don’t scrub your face too much, cut back on the booze, and don’t engage in racist hateration, folks.

ANYWAY! The last I’ve read, if I remember correctly, is that you’re supposed to exfoliate two times a week.

The hell if I’m gonna let that stop me, though. I’ve recently gone almost a month with nothing more than MAYBE rinsing with water and a lackadaisical swipe with my Nip & Fab Glycolic Pads. And I gained the dull complexion and crop of whiteheads to prove it.

So I chose to be an idiot this past week, and use my peel pads twice a day.

If you’re going to be a stupid person like me, I don’t recommend doing so for more than a short burst of 2 to 3 days in a row – and you’ll want to also moisturize the Bejesus out of your face both during and after this burst of aggression against it. Stop, immediately, if your skin feels super tight after washing, or if anything zings or stings or hurts.

First, a little 101. There are two way to exfoliate your face: chemical, and physical. These are very commonly used procedures to aid in antiaging and anti-acne pursuits. I do both in varying measures.

Physical: rubbing the skin with abrasive items or substances specifically designed for this purpose. (brush, creamy scrub with microbeads, etc) Chemical: engaging in low-key chemical warfare against clogged pores and old skin-cells with a cream, gel, or serum that contains an acid (alpha hydroxy such as glycolic, citric, or lactic – or beta hydroxy such as salicylic.) Retinoids such as retinol or tretinoin also serve an exfoliant purpose – encouraging more rapid cell turnover.

Mini-education complete. And now, the recommendations!

Five Exfoliant Products I Swear By:

1. 3 times a week, after my Micellar water: glycolic peel pad on chest, neck, and face. The Nip & Fab ones have cult status for a reason – they work great! The percent of acid in these is low enough, you don’t even need to rinse it. I know there’s a bunch of 15 and 20 percent products out there, like the cult-favorite Pixi Glow Tonic. I, personally, wouldn’t go above 6 percent. Also, products with menthol in them are unnecessarily drying. Read those ingredients!

2. Once a week: papaya enzyme mask. We call this “the smelly mask” at my house. Papaya definitely has a… unique scent. It’s all over in 10 minutes, and that firmness and GLOW are so worth it. If the papaya scent is a deal-breaker, pineapple and pumpkin also both have enzymes – a chemical that… well, let’s put it this way. Y’know when you eat too much pineapple and your mouth starts to hurt? That’s because those little acidic chemical compounds are trying to eat you right back. That being said, this stuff won’t eat your skin. I’ve accidentally left it on longer than 10 minutes, and I was fine.

3. In the shower, about 3 times a week: lactic acid cream cleanser. Good Lord, this stuff is the bomb. It’s also got some kind of small, scrubby beads that give a light physical exfoliant effect, but dissolve as you rub.

Cream cleansers are highly preferable over foaming washes for one main reason: Especially in the winter, you don’t want to strip off moisture from your face. The air in winter is super dry and tends to suck the moisture right out. Products that foam really just pull the protective moisture away, and then your skin will be easily irritated and tend to over-compensate by producing too much oil. Irritation plus too much oil clogging up those irritated pores = swollen, angry red breakout. No thanks.

4. Also in the shower: silicone face scrubbing brush. Ah, this beautiful, beautiful little brush. It feels like itty-bitty massaging fingers, stimulating blood flow to the face and ever so gently encouraging cell turnover.

I’ve fallen a bit in love with silicone bath products because they’re much kinder to skin than bristle brushes, and they’re bacteria-resistant.

There’s also a more Clarisonic-like, ultrasonic vibrating version that’s spectacular. Oh, and yeah, I use a bigger version for my bod too. It’s gloooorious.

5. Once a week: Mud mask. There’s a variety of these out there, but my fave lately has been the Sky Organics one. It’s very economically priced at about $12, and you just can’t beat that price for a gentle, Dead Sea mineral mud mask with all organic ingredients. It also includes jojoba and calendula oils, so you’re moisturizing even while the mud sloughs off dead skin cells and sucks out excess sebum. My skin is always a bit softer and clearer once I rinse this stuff off.

The Rescue: Moisturizing like a Mofo

To rescue your skin and keep it in balance, you not only want to not exfoliate too hard, but you want to use moisture-rich products to protect that natural barrier. A little bit of dewy shine is just fine. Here are some of my favorites for maintaining a healthy moisture balance.

1. A double-duty deep moisturizer with the beta-hydroxy lactic acid. Pond’s Rejuveness is a product I found while I was browsing the SkinCareAddiction subreddit. It deep moisturizes while gently encouraging cell turnover with lactic acid. It is too ridiculously inexpensive to work as well as it does! I picked up a HUGE tub of the stuff on a whim, for like 8 bucks. It immediately replaced my old Neutrogena Rapid Wrinkle Repair night cream that I’d sworn by. The Neutrogena is decent, too, but it costs 3 times as much. However, if your skin doesn’t play nice with mineral oil, this ain’t the one for you. Also, since it’s got an exfoliant ingredient as well, you may want to also use a serum and/or alternate with a moisture product that purely moisturizes without the chemical exfoliant.

2. Micellar water to gently clean off makeup, and any skin pollutants you’ve picked up over the course of the day. In short, micellar water is made by mixing purified water with an oil to create ‘miceles’ – tiny balls of oil that suspend in the water. These balls chemically attract to the makeup-gunk on your skin, removing it and leaving a thin layer of the moisturizing oil. Please note, if your skin is prone to congestion that causes breakouts, you’ll want to at least rinse off with regular water after using. If I’m being protective of my moisture barrier, I’ve been known to just use micellar water, rinse, then moisturize and be done.

3. For eye makeup removal, lips, and an over-all occlusive layer at the end of nighttime moisture routine: Unpetroleum Jelly. The stuff is amazing. It’s gentle, it removes my mascara with a tissue or soft cloth, without any hard rubbing, and leaves skin soft. I did cringe at the thought of putting a product involving castor and coconut oils on my face (almost as much as I cringed knowing people use the petroleum-byproduct VASELINE for the same) but so far, so good. It’s a versatile glop that gives great all-over skin protection and moisture.

4. For a nice, extra daily layer of serum moisture: Snail snot (yes really!) I’ve been a huge fan of hyaluronic acid serums for years, but I’ve found the quantity return for my financial investment to be… somewhat lacking. It’s really depressing to get like, 1 to 3 ounces of product for ten bucks or more.

Enter the snail mucin. I was definitely a little skeptical and grossed-out that LOL, rich ladies are putting WHAT on their faces now? But then I got to thinking. Snails crawl around on some pretty inhospitable, rocky, jagged, dirty surfaces. Their tummies are soft and mushy and need protecting! And that mucin they excrete does a darn job keeping them alive to slime around for another day, so what the heck is in that stuff?

Hyaluronic acid and glycolic acid? Copper peptides? All right, fine, get that stuff on my face. All of those things have research-backed beneficial qualities. Also, the CosRX Snail 96 power essence is 96 percent pure snail snot from a well-reputed Korean brand, in a BIG bottle, for less than 20 bucks. (They don’t have to hurt the snails to get it, either. It’s just a natural product of moving around their environment.)

5. For deep, protective moisture with anti-bacterial properties: Cicaplast Baume B5 moisture cream. This one has cult status for a reason. It’s thick, it’s rich, and I don’t frankly always love how it feels or how long it takes to absorb.

If you put on too thick of a layer, it’s going to feel greasy for while. It’s got a fairly high zinc content, too, so expect a whitish cast that you’ll need to rub a bit to blend out. If I use this cream at night, my skin feels super plump and hydrated in the morning. I also notice that, even though it feels greasy at first, the panthenol and the natural anti-bacterial properties take the red and the swell out of any breakouts and promote faster healing.

I originally got it for the purpose of having a gentle moisture product on hand after dermarolling, but even though I haven’t dermarolled in months, I’ll still keep buying this awesome little cream.

Well, now you have it. I’ve spilled my guts on all these skin-glow products that save me from scaling up in crusty, rhino-like skin during the harsh Midwestern winter. Throw in a nice humidifier, drink enough water, and maybe get one of those fancy SAD treatment lamps, and we might start passing for functional, non-depressed adults. Hey, a gal can dream…

What is your favorite winter skin-saver product?