On spending quality face time.

Runner up title: On hippotherapy.

Spoiler alert: it’s not what it sounds like.

Hippotherapy is horseback riding as therapy. I know. I was hoping for cute pictures of hippos, too.

Hymn 927 ends with this strange phrase: “give us souls to give to Thee.” It reminds me of the verse 1 Chronicles 29:14. “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should have strength to offer so willingly in this way? For all things are from You, and from Your hand we have given to You.” I’ve quoted this before on this blog. It echoes still in me. I don’t have strength to offer willingly. I don’t even own my own soul that I should proffer it to one or another. The Lord is, and He alone.

My most recent inconvenient truth is that skincare actually works on my face.

What? Surely this is fake news.

Let me rewind.

Exactly one month ago, I was sleeping over at a friend’s place. It had been a long day of trawling Flushing’s many food nooks, and I washed the day off in my usual manner: splashing water on my face. For a little extra emulsifying action, I lathered up some hand soap and did a scrub-and-rinse. Then, with runnels of water tracing my forearms, I looked for a towel. Not finding one, I wiped my face with my pajama shirt. (What? It was clean!)

My friends, two of whom subscribe to the 10-step Korean beauty regimen, gave visible shudders of revulsion. They laid out some of the principles of their regimes: only use hands to touch the face. Everything else has germs. Facial skin is delicate. Don’t scrub at it like a Neanderthal — massage in gentle outward circles. Pat moisturizer on instead of smearing it.

Their faces were treated with the delicacy of a macaron. I treated my face like a cinnamon raisin bagel. It was spotty like one, too. The last time I could remember not having at least one pimple was probably 7th grade. I was promised that zits, like secondary education, would pass, and adult life would come, bringing smooth T-zones as a package bundle with solo living and credit card bills. Needless to say, adulthood is here and I’ve only got the credit card bills to my name at the moment. I tried different face washes and methods through the years (never too diligently) and concluded that my skin was just hopeless, so I might as well learn to love it as it is, and I do.

But I was curious. So I decided to test out this world of skincare. Just a dabble, mind you, a lazy person’s attempt to once-for-all refute the “skincare fixes acne” trope and vindicate my lax regimen. My sister generously bequeathed me about a hundred assorted skincare sample packs, and I set about to utterly use them up on my face.

Here’s my condensed, sluggard version of the 10-step Korean skincare method:

1. Clean/exfoliate. This is where you either use a face wash, an exfoliating wash, or soapy-type. If you had make-up on, by the end of this step you shouldn’t. Check for success: after this step, does your face have fewer skin cells than before? If yes, pat face dry with face towel and move on.
2. Tone. This is the pseudo-sciency step that I’m agnostic about. You squip out three or four drops of toner, pat on this runny solution on your face, and wait for it to dry. It’s supposed to balance your skin pH. But step 1 only involves emulsifiers at most, which shouldn’t affect pH? Anyway. Check for success: after this step, does your facial expression look sheepish, you sheeple?
3. Moisturize. If you have essences or masks or whatever, slap ‘em on now. Then if you have a face cream, wait a few moments for respect, then pat-circle-rub those on, too. Then if you have eye cream, put that on as well. Check for success: does your face feel like a moist tiramisu cake? Do your hands feel horrid and oily?
4. Sleep. You’ve earned it, you hard face worker.

I bash the method, but after a month of unabashed stash-busting (I went through an average of 3 product packets a day), the results are non-stochastic. After a week, my rate of new acne acquisition (acne-sition?) went from 3–4 to 1. After two weeks, I didn’t have any new pimples. After three weeks, all my old acne had healed. After four weeks, I have no traces of the former ravagery. I can’t chalk it up to less stress or serendipitous hormones or more sleep, because none of those things improved in the last month. And it wasn’t one specific product or brand that did it . I must have used products from over 30 different brands. It was just the method.

I ran out of product packs a few days ago, and when I just washed my face with water, within a day a new pimple appeared on the horizon. It’s an angry red mark on my face right now. In my month of skin respite, I had started wondering if adulthood had really come, and my acne had decided to retire. No, it’s still there, just subdued by diligence.

What do I do, now that I know that skin care works? Should I continue? Am I too lazy or cheap to continue? Suspense reigns.