I’m not saying that having five children has left me looking aged and exhausted. But coincidentally, in 2020, after having five children in 11 years, I did wonder why my face looked quite…so…troubling.
And in general I’m happy to just slap on a bit of this tinted moisturizer or the best CC cream out there and hope for the best but somehow the combination of many children, the pandemic and a repatriation did have what felt like some kind of serious impact on my face. I looked, well, a bit cross and tired.
All that to say, this is a post about skincare and here are my hard-won discoveries.
Everyone else is having botox
I spent a significant amount of time wondering about Botox to stop me looking so cross. Then I went to talk to an aesthetician, hypothetically, about Botox and about 33 seconds later I was having Botox to iron out my perma-frown.
Honestly it felt like I went to an aesthetician and asked about the ethics of having a leg wax. As she told me with absolute certainty, everyone else is having Botox. So in the name of scientific discovery (and definitely not vanity) I gave it a whirl.
It absolutely made me look a bit less grumpy for a while (and maybe even feel a bit less grumpy, while unable to frown?) – but it also was just a little bit disconcerting, and on occasion quite limiting, not being able to fully convey my feelings of deep disapproval in one swift scowl.
Also, I think the point of Botox and looking surprisingly refreshed, is probably that you don’t tell people that you’ve had Botox, but I felt compelled to tell anyone who mentioned anything about my appearance that I HAD SOME BOTOX which is, as I soon established, awkward for everyone involved.
I haven’t done that again. Instead…
La Roche-Posay cicaplast is a miracle
…Instead, I joined a private Facebook group that has 129,000 group members – all of whom know much, much more about skincare than I could ever understand. And what I have gleaned from this group is mostly that all their myriad collective knowledge comes to one heady discovery:
Now I definitely don’t have sensitive skin but also if I use pretty much any product on my skin I seem to have some kind of horrible reaction (I’m looking at you, touché eclat, Weleda skin food). However, La Roche-Posay Cicaplast (LRP cicaplast as my NBF Facebook fellow group members refer to it) is some kind of miracle sent to make your skin softer/glowier/younger/overall BETTER.
Also, LRP was a saviour during my slightly early energetic approach to retinol use during which I gave myself a casual chemical burn. The aesthetician did direct me to start retinol use slowly, 2-3 times a week, but I was feeling pretty confident at this point and went straight to daily use. Let’s just say I would definitely not recommend this level of conviction in the future.
Once or twice a week retinol, though, quite the revelation. And combined with another La Roche Posay nightly classic:
This is a longer post about skincare than I’d imagined.
I can’t write about skin without a quick sidebar to The Best CC cream by Erborian. Erborian is a Korean-French skincare company which, obviously, means that it must be good. Anyway this CC cream goes on as a white dewy moisturizer and adapts to match your skin tone in a sort of glorious magic-meets-science mashup. It leaves your skin tone looking more even, less haggard, even, dare I say it, more like you haven’t just had five children. Ten out of ten, five stars, would recommend to a friend. I am recommending to a friend!
Ok. That’s a lot of skincare chat. My FB skincare group would be proud of me.
XxtMatM