I am Used to Barbaric Looking Vast Incisions

There will be no way to “prove” if my experiment “worked”...

I used to be a beauty journalist.

Not everyone knows that, but the love of chemicals and concoctions never seems to go away.

Even though so much has changed (I went from hosting events at Fashion Week to happily NOT wanting to influence anyone - unless it’s too be nicer, or more playful with Seussonian adjectives when we write), I still spend my late nights researching whatever scientific concoctions or concepts that are creating something new.

I got my love for the chemistry behind products from my older sister (stealing her Delia’s catalogue and smelling her Victoria’s Secret lotions like stolen national treasures lest I ever be caught), but I continue with it in the pursuit of proving (maybe?) that the grandmothers of our past who used cocoa butter and Jergens and Ponds and Noxzema were just as savvy as the filtered Crème De La Expense of this enlightened, skin-lightened age.

There will be no way to “prove” if my experiment “worked”, of course, because this is a long term study with very poor data collection (goals being having a “no makeup, barefoot Pam Anderson on Vancouver Island naturalness” if I’m lucky enough to grow into myself more and more and stay on this third rock from the sun).

Recently, I asked one of my young dancers why she was glowing like the sun despite how hard the teenage years can, and she said she applies a glowy sunscreen everday (she deserves an Olympic medal already), concealer in dots just where she needs it, the E.L.F Halo Glow blush (“because it glows so much better than Charlotte Tilbury”), a little more highlighter on top of that, and then…. the final secret that she said makes all the recent difference… she sprays a glowy sunscreen setting spray on top of everything.

“I hate sunscreen,” I told her, thinking about how much my eyes cry like its allergy season every single time I go ham on the 45, to which she gasped (I appreciates that), and I clarified, “No, I wear it… I just hate it.”

And that’s true. I just can’t find one that doesn’t leave me Kim K crying face.

But…. I trust the glowy gorgeous teens with the sensible protection sensibilities, and I also find that my best intel these days is from grans or anyone under the age of 25 (you’re welcome for giving you the DL on the SPF).

I am pretty determined to find a glowy spray I can tolerate, but in the meantime (as this was recent classified information), I can show you what I did to try

The footage here is not after a surgery like it often is. I am used to barbaric looking vast incisions on both my front and back, or on my neck, or even the side of my face one time. Scars I can’t remember even if you paid me…. They fall away like feathers as I focus on the updraft. But I made this a few months ago while on a rare beach hideaway stay with my best friend, struggling with something some can relate to and some cannot:

If I “leave” to do anything outside- even just watch a kiddo play in the yard, years ago- and I return multiple shades darker than when I went.

My kiddo doesn’t experience this constrast, in contrast… but I often have to buy a $3 or $4 type of drugstore concealer before I go, so that if I want to dot something on, it won’t be completely, newly irrelevant like all my previous products become, appearing like plaster on canvas.

Though I still want to master a drugstore version of the teen-ballerina glow routine (I definitely should suss out this science, right?)… Here is a moment of trying to match my freckled face to the rest of my body.

(No one cares, but for journalistic context because I am a professional: I am reverse ombre naturally and certain parts of my body- especially my hips, for example- get much darker than other areas no matter where I go or how old I get it. It’s just how my body enjoys this paint by number of life?)

The only thing I can say is that IF I end up radiating naturally from within at any age and stage and not a clear pile of chemical-spill goo like Alex Mack after all the radiation and medications and treatments I’ve received over the years, it will be a miracle.

Though it won’t have anything to do with my barefoot Pam Anderson skincare hopes, or my “drugstore granny” thesis determination, it WILL show me that small acts of normalcy that make me feel less like the walking radiation monster that I am have value.

We all want to glow in different ways… but I’d love to know yours.

For now, I’m pretending that I’m barefoot and pain-free on Vancouver Island in the shade…

Where are you pretending to be?

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