I Am a Very Very Very Very Bad “Follow”

If I follow someone who loves skincare and beauty but they’re constantly using different products, I get stressed.

I realize that this is an issue with me and not with the beauty creative who is trying to thrive in an industry built upon pushing new new new (it’s not their fault)… But since I tend to only trust things with “time” as the primary testament behind it (the more centuries of data, the better)… I am a very very very very bad “follow”.

If it isn’t routine… it’s not a routine.

I want to know what a mature woman of experience has been using and loving for most of her lifetime. I want to know what a grandmother oceans away would recommend to her own granddaughter, instead of what’s being marketed as the latest metaphoric cigarette before a Surgeon General said otherwise.

At the same time: I’ll be honest in the fact that I want things that work, and give me as much bang for my buck as possible (I grew up in Boca. The fact I’m not 90% plastic is astonishing but I still want sh*t that works). I wish I were holistic and crunchy granola like my sweet Momma who packed me tempeh for lunch growing up when Lunchables were the only cafeteria currency, and introduced me to seaweed and avocados before I realized all my friends were trading Little Debbie’s on the playground.

I am not as cool as my mom. I am okay with some weird science and I also know my skin truly loves honey as if I’m some exotic yurt-living goddess living off the land. (I like my honey shaped like plastic bear, please and thanks.)

The naturalistic troll-bots of the internet who scream about curing herpes with lemon grass and açaí are never going to win me over. I will spread my fictional herpes with intentional and wild abandon rather than cow-tow to a bot.

I think my point is: Im not worried about what chemicals I’m putting in my body… especially since 90% of my body has to be built upon radiation by now due to my chronically crappy health… so I shan’t be wooed by whatever wave of naturalism is passing through the Internet or skin care field at any given time.

I’m always going to love chemicals and cosmetics in equal penny-pinching measure, even if you don’t want to read my writing or see my lamely lit bathroom videos when they have to do with this side affair. We want to associate a human being with who’s just one thing - the “How To Win The Internet” guides seem to say- but my mistress will always proudly be this silly nurturing little sink ritual that I learned from my older sister who’s a cognoscenti, and she from my mom who wore very little but when she did it was blue, and she from her mother who powdered our Floridian backsides with baby powder fresh from a bath, and smelled of gardenias and love.

Love to me feels like… time. Time alone over a bathroom vanity. Time to ignore the bathroom doorknob as it wiggles from a child in need (but not really in need). Time to turn my mind off of work for a second. Time to be defined as more than one thing; more than one hashtag.

Love feels like the smell of baby powder and gardenias that aren’t really there… but when I wash my face at night, and pass the Vaseline to my daughter next to me, leaving her own day behind…

I can almost smell them.

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