Let's Talk About My Face

I mean, if you need a distraction from the news, or something

By Britta

Photo by Adrian Motroc on Unsplash

I’m not excited to see the screen time report on my phone for this week. Apparently at some point I started believing election results were updated every 30 seconds, even in the early hours of the morning (not anxious to see my sleep score either, for that matter). I’m guessing it’s safe to say we are *all* a little tense, and needing a bit of distraction. To that end, let’s talk about something completely different than our fractured, exhausted nation. Let’s talk about something that doesn’t matter to most of you. Let’s talk about my face. 

One more casualty of this 2020 Suckfest is I wasn’t able to buy my beauty products for quite a while. 

I first started using Products a few years ago after an unfortunate encounter at the park. After meeting and chitchatting with another mom for a few minutes, she said, “you’re about my age, right? 40-ish?” At a spring chicken-ish 35, I was horrified, and expressed as much. We didn’t end up being friends. 

When I got home, I studied myself closely in the mirror, and a phrase I remembered from childhood kept playing in my mind. Fine lines and wrinkles. Fine lines and wrinkles. For so many years, those were nonsense words spouted by some aging actress interrupting my Saturday cartoons. But suddenly they carried real, personal meaning. The fine lines were written across my face, and if I didn’t get whatever that lady had been selling in the early 90’s they would soon become just lines. Then heavy lines. Then chasms. So, I decided to do the responsible thing and rub creams on my face that would retroactively correct all the mistakes of my adult life. Including skin-related mistakes. 

But Britta, you don’t look a day over 25! Tell us about these products you use! 

Very well dear reader, I will. Well, I’ll try. Truth is, my loyalties are very much for sale and as such, the products themselves shift regularly. But the process of buying the products is tried and true:

You go to Marshalls, peruse the skincare products, and search for the most favorable “elsewhere price” to “our price” ratio. If it’s expensive elsewhere then it *must* be high quality, and if it’s cheap here and now then it meets my stringent criteria for buying it. High quality for a low price? That’s what I call value.  (Additional insider tip: the ratios get even more favorable in the clearance section.) 

The basic function and necessity of a cleanser is apparent to me so I start with that, but after that, it’s really a game of Russian Roulette with my pores. I like to buy ‘serum' because the title is vague enough to lend a sense of mystery— whimsy, even—to skincare. I picture wood nymphs brewing it in a cauldron, sprinkling in dust and goo and chanting “the serum is nearly finished.” (These nymphs are likely somewhere in forests of Malaysia, if I’m reading the label correctly.) I really don’t know what it does, which gives me the freedom to imagine it can do anything. 

If I can find a good deal on a matching set of daytime and nighttime creams in pretty coordinating bottles I will buy both, otherwise I just buy the night cream and squirt some sunscreen in it, call it good. 

Here and there I’ll buy a peel off mask, not so much for whatever it may or may not be doing to my skin, but because the process of peeling it off after the gel dries is extremely satisfying. Remember peeling glue off your hands in first grade? If you could find the right balance of peeling velocity and structural integrity of the glob, you could get it off in one long strip, like snakeskin. This is the grown-up version of that, but with less mess and more lemon scent.

They say the key to any skincare routine is consistency, and I’ve got that one nailed: I consistently use these products when I feel motivated to do so. And do they really work? Well, I like to look at my little pile of bottles and imagine that the secrets of youth that have evaded scientists for centuries could be hidden in one of them. All that was missing was someone bold enough to believe.   

So you can see why, when Marshall’s shut its doors back in March, I was dismayed. I had spent years building up contempt for ‘elsewhere’ prices and the people who paid them, and I couldn’t accept an elsewhere-to-now price ratio of 1.0. COVID may have stolen my childcare, my sense of wellbeing, and my willpower to not lick the wrapper when I open a stick of butter, but it would not take my values… at least the ones involving paying full price for cleanser. 

And so I embraced a soap and water routine, and watched as deep set lines spread across my face and dark golf balls grew under my eyes. There were some other extenuating circumstances that may have contributed to this premature aging (see above re: childcare, wellbeing, & butter), but the hotel soap I found in a travel bag certainly didn’t help stop the dam from bursting. 

But guys, there’s good news in all of this. Marshall’s is open again (for now)! So put down that Irish Spring and go distract/treat yourself to some Products. I ended up with a $17.99 bottle of toner for $4, which gave this week the major boost it needed— and will hopefully soon do the same for my face. And if you ever find yourself wondering why this product is so deeply discounted and whether that decreases the chances that it does in fact contain the secret silver bullet of youth, just tell yourself, maybe it’s here because no one believed in it enough to try it. Go be a hero.