Winter to Spring Skincare
Well, it happened: I was felled by dermorexia.
Alright, that might be a little extreme. I did get moderately into potions, as my sister calls them, during the pandemic and I was using a total of ten OTC products daily this past winter. I didn’t really know what i was trying to accomplish with them other than looking “better,” which I couldn’t even define. I don’t mind wrinkles - I think they’re a sign that we laugh with joy and frown with concern and that we’re lucky enough to age - but I guess I was trying to look as smooth and fresh as possible. And there was probably some internal anti-fatness going on, too; as Virginia Sole-Smith writes, “I think for a lot of us in bigger bodies, there’s often some added pressure around skincare. Like, if I’m not meeting the size beauty standard, I have to have good skin.”
Encouraged by the few skincare influencers I still follow on Instagram, I asked my dermatologist last fall if a retinoid might help with the redness on my cheeks. She said yes and gave me a prescription for tretinoin, which she cautioned me to use sparingly until I knew my skin could tolerate it. I used it once a week without issues - it didn’t seem to be making things better but it wasn’t making things worse, either - and so eventually increased to twice a week with her blessing. By the new year, though, my cheeks were more inflamed and I was experiencing breakouts over the redness, which I’d never before suffered.
Typing this out now makes it sound so insane, but my thought process at that point was something along the lines of “Clearly I just need to take this top layer of unhappiness off my face and things will be beautiful and new underneath.”
Dear reader, it turns out that is not how skin works.
Within a few weeks of using tret twice a week and exfoliating on the other five nights, my skin was such a disaster that I went back to the dermatologist for help. She took one look at me, diagnosed rosacea acne, took away my tretenoin and prescribed a topical antibiotic, and told me to go back to basics to repair my skin barrier. It took less than a month for my skin to recover, and it is so much happier now using just cleanser, moisturizer, and SPF!
(To note: when I saw Tisha, my beloved aesthetician at Heyday, after my diagnosis, she nodded sagely and said, “I’m not surprised.” Although she’s not allowed to share medical observations in her role, she knew what was coming down the pike and had tried to protect my skin as best she could in the 50 minutes a month I spent with her!)
So, here are my current products. I’m probably going to switch to CeraVe’s Ultra Light Gel Moisturizer when the summer heat and humidity really hit, but I’m not finding their standard Moisturing Cream too heavy for DC’s current weather. I will say this routine - such as it is - isn’t as much fun as my old one was and I am missing the self-care rituals I had around skincare before, but my wallet is certainly preferring it!
