I exfoliated today. Yesterday too. Am I the last woman in the industrialized world to learn how much fun face products can be? I've always just used soap (Dove) and water (tap) and left it at that. Well, okay, I also used a towel. But recently I started realizing everyone else moisturizes and uses masks and oils and their faces smell like apricot or almonds or avocado and you could, if you were very confused and it was very dark, make a mistake and try to eat their nose with maybe some peanut butter and an apple, only probably that's in there too.
I'm old, though. Ancient crone old. Which is to say I'm over forty, something very like if not exactly like (okay, exactly like) middle age. I have wrinkles. Admittedly very small wrinkles, and only in a few places. (Unless I purse my lips and make like I'm going to give you a tiny great aunt Matilda kiss, and then I have a bunch more, but I don't count that and you shouldn't either.) But you just know the creases are lurking, biding their time, waiting for my skin to give up the pretense of youth and vitality. And this soap-and-water thing? Getting, if you'll pardon the expression, old.
Besides which, it's not very feminine, splashing water on, sudsing up with a bar of generic white glycerin. I'm all about feminine right now. Happy with my ongoing weight loss, living in my body more. Enjoying my body and my face and even my hair. Doing something most women probably experience at age twenty or even fifteen or... twelve? Seven? I don't know. I was a tomboy. Allergic to the hairdryer, unfamiliar with makeup. Then I migrated to the artsy eccentric look. Colorful clothes, dangly earrings, wildly patterned tights. It's a kind of feminine energy but it doesn't require much primping, at least not my version. After that... well, I gradually laped into schlubby writer morphing into exhausted mom. Not my best look, I'm afraid.
So this is a first. With my mother's guidance, I bought a small selection of Dr. Hauschka's products a couple of days ago. Tried them for the first time yesterday. The cleansing cream has a gentle exfoliant. Putting it on feels like giving my skin a sand bath, which is nicer than it sounds. Very nice, in fact. And the moisturizer (excuse me, clarifying toner) and oil smell so good and feel so soft on my hands. And for the rest of the day, I find myself touching my cheek, stroking it like it belongs to someone else. It feels like silk, like velvet. Why did this take me so long?
Posted by Tamar at December 16, 2003 08:33 AM