Skincare Philosophy: as without, so within

I grew up in the 90s when people had black balloons floating over their 40th birthday parties and talked about being “over the hill.” But I thought I had evolved beyond that thinking; here in Brattleboro, I’m not exposed to as many negative messages about aging. So, I was caught off guard when I suddenly became fixated on my skin after turning forty. It was like I had been infected with a virus in my youth that I’d thought was gone but had just been laying dormant for years and was now suddenly reactivated on my fortieth birthday.

My ensuing feverish research led me to websites full of artful photos of tiny bottles designed to look like prescriptions and/or Minimalist art, podcasts about acids and abrasions, and online articles about potency percentages, sun sensitivity, and microneedles. Beneath the self-care lip service and “backed by science” respectability was a sad and lonely desire for a particular sort of beauty and a baseline conviction that the appearance of aging was to be avoided at all costs. The possibility of perfection dripped dopamine into my brain, and fear fuelled the fire.  The whole endeavor felt like an addiction to a delusion.

I talked with Cheri during this time, one of our Co-op’s wonderful Wellness employees, who has a lot of experience with health and beauty products, to get her thoughts on the subject. I got curious about a line of products called evanhealy that had started appearing on our shelves within the previous year or two. I wondered what was up with the higher prices and low-key packaging. And what’s an oil serum? I thought serums were supposed to be high-tech formulations from a chemistry lab, not delicate oils made of just a few familiar ingredients.

Eventually, after more conversations, reading, and a fair amount of discomfort, I woke up: I needed to align my approach to skincare with my existing values instead of changing my values to fit my quest to have the least amount of wrinkles possible. I began thinking about the principles that underlie the products I use and, perhaps most importantly, the spirit in which I use them. When it comes to food and clothes, I place a premium on the ethics of my purchases; why should this be different when it comes to what I buy to put on my skin? But even with this newfound clarity, I still questioned how well the more natural products would actually work.

When I asked Cheri about evanhealy, she raved about their products, saying they’re doing something genuinely different than other skincare companies. Intrigued and with a newly opened mind, I bought one of the oil serums. After several mystified tries, I watched an interview with Evan herself. She was older, with, yes, some wrinkles, and didn’t have the puffed, glassy look of many people in the beauty care industry—no apparent collagen injections or botox between her brows. I learned that when she was a child, she saw her mother recover from a serious burn with the help of botanical oils. She considers this her first experience with the healing power of plants. I learned about evanhealy’s “oil and water ritual,” and decided to invest in one of their hydrosol mists so I could try it out. As demonstrated, I put a small dab of oil in my hand with a few spritzes of hydrosol, emulsified them between my palms, inhaled the scent, and pressed the sweet fragrant mixture onto my cheeks. It made me smile. I felt nourished, happy…I felt relaxed and cared for. After finding the right balance of oil and water, I noticed that my skin seemed to like it, too. The surface of my skin was smooth and radiant, and I felt like I was finally back in alignment with my terrestrial spirit. It was a truly luxurious experience, like how I feel after eating a great meal: elevated, satisfied, and clear in a way that, in my mind, is the result of the food being prepared with love, kindness, and joy.

I also chatted with Chris, our previous Wellness manager, about evanhealy. He pointed out that they never use the language of youth obsession, like “anti-aging” or anti-wrinkle. After working with the company over many years, Chris felt their hearts were in the right place. He told me that using oils for skin health is an ancient practice and that Cleopatra and ancient Romans used these natural technologies.

In my research for this article, I came across an excerpt on the evanhealy site from a book called Farmacology (Miller, 2016). This passage comparing agriculture to skincare fascinated me: “… both skin and soil have three major layers and a top protective layer of dead cells (the humus or the stratum corneum); each harbors microorganisms in the upper layers; each is responsible for exchanging water, vitamins and minerals, and gasses with the outside world; and each is constantly producing new structures, whether hair, sebum, or blades of grass. Just as the health of the soil offers a barometer for the health of the farm, our skin—our most visible organ—serves as a gauge of our overall health.”

This passage helped me understand how I could approach skincare in a way that felt good: I just needed to apply the knowledge I already had. If my skin was like soil, I wanted to be a really good farmer.

Big Ag destroys the soil in the process of achieving its single-minded ends: through using poisonous pesticides and plowing, and then replacing what was lost with fertilizers, and utilizing underpaid labor all the while. Big Beauty seeks its ends by stripping away our skin’s natural protections and oils and adding back moisturizers and fillers, and in general, cares little for workers’ rights or climate concerns. On some level, it’s all the same derangement.

Conversely, regenerative and no-till agriculture nourish the soil, create healthy ecosystems, and sequester CO2. Soil becomes rich with minerals and other nutrients, and pests and diseases are kept at bay not with biocidic sprays but with healthy, disease-resistant plants. Why should we not use the same approach to our skin?

Evanhealy products and many of the local, small-batch, or otherwise herbal-based skincare products we carry, like Heart Grown Wild, Good Body Products, Fat and the Moon, Badger, and BioHerboloQi, follow this line of thinking. They feed the skin and give it the nourishment it needs to build a healthy system that does what it’s built to do: let out the stuff we don’t want, and absorb the stuff we do.

Another layer is also at play: the way set and setting affect outcomes. Perhaps a part of the efficacy of these products isn’t only in what ingredients they contain but also in what the user’s intention is when they’re applied. Just like a good meal isn’t only about what ingredients are used but also the spirit with which it was made, the circumstances and mindset of procuring, creating, and using skincare products likely have a significant impact on their effects.

These days, after this crisis of conscience about how to deal with aging in this wildly misguided society, I try to have integrity when choosing what to put on my body—to use the same principles that guide other choices I make in my day-to-day life. I reach for products that respect the innate intelligence of my skin and gently aid its important function as the physical boundary between my insides and the outside environment. My approach to how I treat my skin just had some growing up to do.

by Ruth Garbus