Welcome to another installment of Soap Notes Q & A. I picked a few more commonly asked questions from my last Instagram poll, and hope my honest, common-sense answers are helpful as you try to live your best life out there in this wild and increasingly wacky world we all share. Thanks to the askers of these great questions, and feel free to drop any questions you’d like to have answered in a future post in the comments!
“Do you get any medical/cosmetic treatments to your face?”
As of today, the only cosmetic thing I’ve had done to my face is to have a sun spot removed, because it looked like a little bruise in all of my photos. My dermatologist used IPL (intense pulsed light) on the first visit, then froze it on a second visit, and now the sun spot is no more. The procedure barely registered as physical discomfort. I currently have other sun spots on my face, but they don’t bother me as much, so I’m leaving them alone for the moment. For a deep dive on sun spots, check out this article on the Osmia blog.
As for Botox, fillers, and other cosmetic procedures, they just don’t appeal to me right now. I’m 51, so perhaps they will look more enticing as I continue to age (they did for my mom), but I’m trying to cultivate a loving relationship with my aging face, and appreciate how my imperfections make my face… my face. The fact that one of my eyes is slightly more open than the other, for example, is part of what made my newborn daughters recognize my face as their safest space, which is one of the most beautiful connections I have ever witnessed in my years on this planet. I also think watching my mom die at age 64 made me aware of how short life could be, and I’m not sure I want to spend my impossibly finite time and energy on what might end up feeling like an endless series of tweaks to my appearance. It’s the same reason I stopped coloring my hair: I’m trying to give myself permission to let myself be. Be older, be comfortable, be grateful, be imperfect, be 51, be alive.
I have a theory about Botox that’s worth mentioning here. The new normal is moving toward starting Botox in your 20s, which feels like a mistake to me. Why? Well, I could rattle off a long list of reasons related to patriarchy and the ever more absurd and unattainable beauty standard we have created for women, but I’ll stick to a more anatomical concern for the sake of brevity. What happens when you inject Botox into a facial muscle? It paralyzes the muscle. And what happens to a paralyzed muscle over time? It atrophies. And what happens when your facial muscles atrophy? The skin on your face looks looser because the muscles underneath it are smaller. And what will your dermatologist recommend to solve that problem? Go ahead, guess. That’s right—fillers! It’s a great business model for dermatologists and plastic surgeons, but I don’t love this tail-chasing sequence for myself, or for anyone else I love. So, for the time being, I’m going to keep using my facial muscles the same way I keep using my ass muscles in the gym: often, and with great vigor.
If I were to try anything, it would probably be a procedure that stimulates collagen production in the skin, which naturally produces less collagen and loses elasticity over time. These types of procedures, like radiofrequency microneedling or laser facials, come with varying degrees of “down time” and fairly hefty price tags. I once called to make an appointment for a Thermage facial, but spit out my coffee when she told me how much it would cost. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to take the plunge.
“Clean deodorant recommendations?”
I should start by saying that I am one of the world’s least stinky people, and it’s not because I own a natural skincare company. I don’t sweat a ton, have never had much body odor, have been a garlic-avoidant vegetarian for over 25 years, and I wear deodorant about ten days a year. This is because something in my hormonal body chemistry is different from that of a person who has significant body odor. So if that makes you want to ignore this section entirely because it feels like a person who can’t speak a word of German teaching your German class, be my guest.
The above said, I have used plenty of deodorants that have irritated my sensitive skin, smelled too strong for my taste, and stained my shirts. And I know a lot about what goes in to a natural deodorant, because I’m in the natural skincare space. In fact, Osmia made a deodorant for many years that some folks (even stinky folks!) swore by, but we discontinued it as the company grew and other products took the lead. So, I’ll share a few deodorants here that meet my ingredient standards for clean (which, by the way, are far more stringent than the standards used by most “clean” brands), are pleasant to use, and have kept me smelling fresh on the occasional day around my cycle when I’ve noticed a whiff of something less than pleasant, mostly from my left armpit. (Anyone else have one pit stinkier than the other??) This is by no means an exhaustive list—just the ones I’ve tested extensively myself. If you have a favorite clean deodorant, please drop it in the comments!
Meow Meow Tweet Deodorant Cream is both simple and very effective. You have to apply it to your armpits with a clean finger, but that has never bothered me since they’re my own armpits and I wash them daily. The active ingredient in their baking-soda-free deodorants is magnesium hydroxide. If you have sensitive underarms, this is definitely my top pick. MMT is also one of the cleanest, most principled, transparent brands in the industry—huge respect to them and all they do. (I feel the same about Soapwalla, but somehow have not tried their deodorants after all these years!)
Humble Brands makes a ton of deodorant sticks in really fresh, lovely scents like Bergamot & Ginger and Palo Santo & Frankincense. Their deodorant ingredients are super simple and very clean.
Ursa Major Hoppin’ Fresh Deodorant smells fantastic and uses hops, eucalyptus, and probiotics to control odor. It also contains diatomaceous earth, which can help you feel less clammy.
Mukti Botanique Deodorant is a spray deodorant recommended by my friend Lisa of The New Knew. I like it a lot, but it has a specific scent that 1) doesn’t smell like me to my nose and 2) does not always coordinate with whatever Osmia body oil or mousse I’m wearing, so I don’t end up using it often. It has both witch hazel and alcohol fairly high on the ingredient list, and a fair number of essential oils, so if you’re a sensitive pit owner, or don’t want to smell your deodorant throughout the day, it might not be my first choice.
I get lots of questions about Native and Salt & Stone deodorants, but they both use either synthetic fragrance or fragrance made with isolates, both of which are too overpowering for me. Isolates are made from essential oils, but if you think of a whole essential oil as a little cowboy made of legos, isolates are the individual legos that make up the little cowboy. I’m not a fan of isolates, because nature knows best how to combine these scent molecules for a balanced scent that my nose recognizes as one that came from the earth. When humans get in there and unbalance things by using isolates instead of whole essential oils, my nose knows the difference. Fragrance aside, these two brands have clean ingredients that should be effective, but I have not tried them myself.
“Is face tape worth it?”
Let’s talk wrinkles for a moment. There are two kinds of wrinkles: dynamic wrinkles and static wrinkles. Dynamic wrinkles are the kind you get from moving your facial muscles every time you talk, yawn, laugh, cry, drink from a straw, or contort your face in delight or disgust. Static wrinkles, on the other hand, are the wrinkles you can still see when your face is completely at rest. They’re the result of reduced skin elasticity, gravity, sun-damage, genetics, lifestyle, and decreased collagen production over time.
Next, let’s think about sleep. Unless you’re having a ghoulish nightmare or getting tickled by a moonwalking giant with the tail feather of an octopus (dreams are cool), you should not be moving your face much while you’re sleeping. So, we’re not worried about creating dynamic wrinkles during sleep. And unless you’re sleeping on your face, or on your side with your face violently smooshed against a pillow, you shouldn’t be too concerned about static wrinkles while you’re sleeping, either. I do recommend a silk or satin pillowcase for your skin (absorbs less moisture) and hair (causes less friction and breakage), and if you can sleep on your back, you will lower the chances of the aforementioned violent face smooshing. But my point here is that when you’re asleep, you’re, um, sleeping.
Lastly, you’ll have to define “worth it” for yourself. There are no scientific studies showing that face taping is effective in preventing or diminishing wrinkles. That doesn’t mean there’s proof that it doesn’t work, but Botox and retinoids have a lot more data behind them if wrinkle management is your primary concern. If you have a bad reaction to the adhesive on your face tape, it’s definitely not going to feel worth it. And, speaking only for myself now, ending each day by applying tape to my face in the hope that it might have a barely perceptible effect on my wrinkles over time does not feel worth it. In fact, I wonder if it could even have a net negative impact on my sense of self worth, prioritizing my appearance and placing more value on a wrinkle-free face (which the tape would not likely accomplish) than on getting a deeply restful night of sleep. Given the number of times I have to adjust my ponytail and my always-aching, perimenopausal shoulders before I can fall asleep each night, I shudder to think how many adjustments I’d have to make to a lattice of adhesive strips.
What would make face taping worth it for you?
Hope this was helpful, and thank you for reading. As always, tap the little heart if you’re feeling the love for Soap Notes, and I’d love to hear your follow-up questions or thoughts in the comments.
Till next time,
💙Sarah
