A colleague at work had some advice in regards to the topic broached in the post below: she said “You should exfoliate.” I told her I never expected anyone to suggest that; usually whenever I do that, people get upset and ask me to leave the room.
But she said “No, exfoliation means that you get rid of the dead skin on your face.” I begged her pardon. My skin is not dead. It may be sleeping, though. Or just drowsy. How many people, after all, are comfortable in their skin? I’m very comfortable in mine, and sometimes that causes my skin to take a little nap. But that’s not the same thing as dead.
The fact of the matter is, I resent the whole push to get men to buy makeup and become participants in the billion-dollar makeup industry. And it’s not just because that and a shaved back will turn me into a meterosexual. It’s that I have no wish to contribute to an industry that experiments on peacocks just so cover girls like Nicole Kidman can pay their mortgage.
There’s only one person in the history of the known world who has been able to significantly slow the aging process: Goldie Hawn. I saw Private Benjamin on TV when I was a kid, and years later I saw Soapdish, and her face hadn’t budged an inch. I later speculated that she was using the time to grow a daughter in a laboratory--Kate Hudson--and when the time was right, she would implant her brain into the young girl’s body and gain the gift of eternal life. At least, this was my theory until I realized that Kate couldn’t act and wasn’t funny, so the person who actually did the brain transplant was her stepfather, Kurt Russell. Creepy, isn’t it? It’s all there if you look into Kate’s cold, aged eyes. This theory was confirmed when, this past Father’s Day, the paparazzi took a photograph of Kate giving herself a tie.
Anyway, the point is that I’m not touching any of that crap until they make some sort of makeup magic wand that I can wave at my face and shout “EXFOLIATE!” Until that time, I will continue to expose the makeup industry for the greedy, bloated empire that it is. I’m currently working on an arthouse documentary about the subject entitled An Inconvenient Rouge.
point of order. exfoliants are usually in face-washes, not-so-much in the makeup itself.
will you boycott the soap industry instead? that could make for an interesting life.
Isn’t there something out there to re-foliate?
botox dip yr potato chip!
Argh! Your skin is supposed to be dead. “The outermost layer of Epidermis consists of 25 to 30 layers of dead cells” (Wikipedia). I’d hope no process of exfoliating takes off 30 layers of dead cells. That would cause problems. We create those dead skin layers for a reason.
Exfoliating is like moisturizing. Do it if you want, but in most cases it’s not strictly necessary. If you get that makeup wand, though, could I borrow it sometimes? It would shave ten minutes off my morning readiness process. Plus, much cooler than spilling powder/foundation on my suit…
The only makeup I like my men wearing is eyeliner. And that, only occasionally.
I’m surprised to learn that Nicole Kidman has a mortgage. For some reason I thought she owned the bank.
The ancient Greeks exfoliated by scraping their skin with a gadget called a “strigil” very similar to a tool used on horses today. Still works - I tried it a few times and it works.
Private Benjamin was the first R-rated movie I saw without my parents. Changed my life.
Woah—I was just thinking of Escape from NY and Escape from LA… Snake was cool.
I thought men exfoliated ever time they SHAVED?!
Excellent! While you’re at it, would you kindly try to reverse the whole leg hair removal thing for us gals? Seriously… it’s a useless practice, and it hurts like a bitch.
@cw
That’s why I use exfoliants, actually, since I’m scraping most of my face with a razor, I like to even out the scraping with some pumice or (more commonly) ground up peach pits.
Of course, in the spell it would be pronounced:
Exfoli-AH-TAY!
ummm, that was Sally Field in Soapdish, not Goldie Hawn.
Or perhaps you were confusing Elizabeth Shue with Goldie Hawn, since they’re both blonde?