Any compulsive quest for a perfect complexion at this time was hardly unique. Last spring, according to the
New York Times,
skin care sales surpassed makeup in the United States for the first
time. Market researchers at the NPD Group also reported that 40 percent
of skin care consumers use products more frequently now than they did in
2019 and 22 percent of women say that the pandemic has caused them to
expand their routines.
Skin care was already seeing a surge in popularity before COVID-19.
Social media has opened up new avenues for purchasing and discussing
products and routines, so much so that the movement has spawned its own
sizable YouTube subgenre. Celebrities from Rihanna to Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez have invited viewers into their bathrooms as they model
their regimens, in some cases even suggesting that the process of
cleansing, polishing, or moisturizing is inherently political.
(“Femininity has power,” Ocasio-Cortez extols in her eighteen-minute
video for Vogue.) Ten-step routines have been marketed as the
height of self-care, and there are countless Facebook and Reddit groups
dedicated to curing acne, banishing dark spots, and keeping wrinkles at
bay.
The closure of the brick-and-mortar marketplace has allowed these
online communities to blossom. “Skinfluencers,” who dish out advice and
reviews on everything from serums and essences to at-home lasers, have
seen major growth in their audience numbers since the start of COVID-19.
Hyram Yarbro, who was crowned “Skincare Influencer of the Year” at the
2020 American Influencer Awards, has been posting videos on YouTube
since 2017 and has gained over 3 million of his 4.55 million subscribers
over the course of the pandemic. (On TikTok, he entered quarantine with
100,000 followers—today, he boasts more than 6.8 million.) And, as
Yarbro points out, plenty of his biggest fans are men. As the world’s
preeminent scientists raced to create COVID-19 vaccines, many of us
engaged in science experiments of our own, alchemizing acids and
retinoids to achieve that elusive “healthy glow.” What was once
dismissed as a girlish pastime, it seems, has become both a coping
mechanism and an attempt to defend our bodies from the outside world.
My prepubescent memories
of skin care during the aughts are replete with neon pinks and fruity
fragrances—a Neutrogena pink-grapefruit cleanser that left my face
tingling and the now-notorious St. Ives apricot scrub that might as well
have been sandpaper. The prevailing logic of the time was that pain
meant efficacy and the walnut shards or microbeads excoriating your
cheeks were doing exactly what they were designed to do. Now, the
industry seems to have shifted toward more scientific (and, by proxy,
less feminized) branding strategies. A collection of skin care products
has become more akin to a personal apothecary than to a makeup vanity.
Take, for example, The Ordinary, the minimalist brand that has
skyrocketed in popularity over the past few years and is a mainstay of
Yarbro’s channel. Whereas more expensive brands tend to name serums and
creams after vague aspirations (Tatcha’s The Dewy Serum and Sunday
Riley’s Good Genes retail for $114 and $112, respectively), The Ordinary
labels each product based on its main ingredients and keeps packaging
simple (think No Name but for skin care). It encourages consumers to
concoct formulas suited to their specific needs: you can buy
“Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%” and “Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5” for under $10
and prepare your own “brightening serum.” The solutions come outfitted
in dropper bottles with austere black-and-white labels, a branding
strategy meant to evoke medical dosages instead of cosmetic luxury.
“Skin care is health,” says Yarbro from his Honolulu residence. The
day I call him, he’s been fielding media requests since dawn. Indeed,
his clear complexion has been plastered across digital media outlets in
the months since his channel took off, and he has been profiled by the New York Times, Vogue, and the Guardian.
Unlike the wing-eyed, contoured influencers who trailblazed the
Instagram beauty subculture of the 2010s, Yarbro is refreshingly bare
faced. He films his videos from his verdant Hawaiian bedroom, a space
that seems eternally Zen, the only pop of colour coming from his
never-ending rotation of violet and cobalt hair dyes. Likewise, his
videos have gained popularity because of his emphasis on ingredients
over packaging. A former Saks Fifth Avenue makeup artist turned amateur
scientist of sorts, he frequently reminds his viewers that he is not a
dermatologist. But a typical video on Yarbro’s channel is almost like an
introductory chemistry class: he compares alpha and beta hydroxy acids’
restorative properties with the affability and ease of a hip TA.
“Your skin is your largest organ,” he says. “Since the pandemic, we
are seeing more of a mental connection between skin care and health—as
opposed to skin care and aesthetics, like we see with makeup.”
My own skin care routine has become intertwined with COVID-19
precautions. I double-moisturize my hands because of the dryness from
constant sanitizing. I am extra careful to cleanse my chin and jawline
to prevent pimples arising from mask-wearing (“mascne,” as it has been
dubbed). As the rules and restrictions governing daily life have
proliferated, so too have the guidelines delineating my beauty routine.
It may not be surprising to learn that taking care of our skin can be
deeply psychological—an attempt to cleanse the body in an increasingly
infected world.
In 1974, French psychoanalyst and Freud disciple Didier Anzieu first
introduced the concept of “the skin-ego.” The skin-ego, he wrote, is a
“psychic envelope” that defends the body—and the psyche—from external
aggravators. Skin protects our insides both physically and in figures of
speech: Don’t let it get under your skin; I’ve got thick skin.
In a pandemic, when external infectants are not only everywhere but
impossible to detect, the maintenance of this psychic envelope takes on
newfound importance.
Marc Lafrance, an associate professor of sociology at Concordia
University and a preeminent scholar of Anzieu, studies people’s
experiences with acne and argues that skin-related anxieties have been
exacerbated these days. Lafrance has weathered the pandemic in Sweden,
where he holds a guest professorship at Örebro University and has been
working on his newest project, the “Rule of Touch,” in which he plans to
explore the psychology of pimple-popping. While his research is still
in nascent stages, Lafrance asserts that pimple-popping “crystallizes a
constellation of conflicts in relation to agency and autonomy, anger and
aggression, control and mastery, and guilt and shame.” In other words,
popping a pimple, a bodily invader you never asked for, is especially
triumphant at a time when, as case counts remain high in some
jurisdictions, fighting the rise of infection can feel increasingly
futile.
“[Anzieu] helped us to think about how the body’s skin is far more
than a cutaneous sheath,” Lafrance tells me over Zoom. “The pandemic is a
very literal manifestation of how the skin serves as this interface
between self and the world. It is an interface that is very fragile and
very vulnerable, and it needs a lot of attention.”
Skin care has proliferated in the pandemic for myriad reasons,
Lafrance explains. For one, practising “self-care” and other beauty
routines are some of the only available pastimes while quarantining
alone. But the process also speaks to something much more primal: the
desire to control the self as normal life slides further and further
from our grasp. It’s hardly a new phenomenon; however, such
preoccupations are certainly heightened when any skin-to-skin contact
risks contagion. Squeezing pimples and blackheads allows us to visualize
the body’s infections in stark contrast to the maddeningly invisible
coronavirus. Cloroxing countertops and sanitizing fingertips raw can
feel like a blindfolded game of whack-a-mole. But, after puncturing a
pimple, the release of sebum and pus provides the definitive
satisfaction of having successfully expelled an infectant.
“There’s a way in which pimples get conditioned in our own minds as
nonhuman actors—they’re us, but they’re not us at the same time,”
Lafrance says. “Part of the reason that pimple-popping is so exciting is
because it is a chance to reassert the agency of the subject rather
than the object.”
The compulsion to master and control the imperfections in our skin is
even more apparent when you consider the popularity of
borderline-masochistic skin care treatments, like pore vacuums,
dermarolling, and dermaplaning—wherein a dermatologist scrapes a
surgery-grade scalpel against patients’ cheeks to remove peach fuzz,
dead skin, and other obtrusive gunk. Superstar dermatologist Sandra
Lee’s fame has risen to such a height that Dr. Pimple Popper, her show on TLC, has been granted a spin-off, Dr. Pimple Popper: Before the Pop.
And brands haven’t shied away from satiating consumers’ impulses to
pick, poke, prod, and satisfy quasi-Freudian desires to expel bodily
fluids. Last April, Bioré marketed its infamous pore strips with a
commercial that cautioned, “Warning: Oddly Satisfying Content Ahead.”
The poreless model peels the strip off her nose, peering at its contents
with a look somewhere between disgust and delight.
While there is a good deal of guilty pleasure to be found in a popped
pimple, the new generation of consumers is also transitioning to a new
approach. “For so long, we have viewed skin care as reparative rather
than preventative,” Yarbro says. “I think Gen Z is the first audience
that views skin care as truly preventative.” A must-have ingredient for
Yarbro is retinol, the anti-aging elixir that promises to speed cell
turnover and reduce the appearance of wrinkles, fine lines, and dark
spots, all while treating acne. In a 2017 article for The New Yorker,
“The Year that Skin Care became a Coping Mechanism,” Jia Tolentino
described her foray into retinol as “one of many small, ridiculous
attempts to affirm to myself that I will outlive the Trump
Administration.” COVID-19 has rushed our fixations with mortality to the
foreground, and it’s easier to curate an anti-aging skin care regimen
than it is to ruminate about the inevitable. In quarantine, I have
incorporated retinol and a vitamin C serum into my routine, on top of
drinking two litres of water every day and slathering my skin with SPF
60 sunscreen despite rarely leaving the house—as any skinfluencer will
tell you, the sun’s damaging rays can cause wrinkles and sunspots even
through windows. I don’t just want to outlive the pandemic but to emerge
as if I’ve been cryogenically frozen, the same twenty-two-year-old
recent graduate who entered lockdown last March.
Last summer, when a close friend received a diagnosis of late-stage
lymphoma, cosmetics continued to dominate discussion among my friends.
In our group chat, which by then resembled many a “skin care addiction”
Reddit thread, we tried to brainstorm suggestions for retinol
alternatives since chemotherapy renders skin too sensitive for such
harsh active ingredients. We conducted our own research and ended up
mailing our friend Rachel Dermalogica’s Sensitive Skin Rescue Kit in
time for the start of her treatment. In some ways, it felt like we were
denying the stakes of what was happening, making-believe that there was
no problem a gentle cleanser couldn’t fix. But it was also a relief to
focus on the frivolous.
“You hear about people saying, ‘We have to resist the temptation to
see the pandemic as an opportunity to optimize,’” Lafrance says. “But I
think that working on the self has become a real hallmark of pandemic
isolation because it’s one of the only things we can do, rightly or
wrongly.” I can’t say that my skin or soul have benefited from nightly
excavations of what lies beneath my epidermis. My reflection certainly
looks nearly identical to how it did last March; as Ontario endured its
third lockdown, waiting for Sephora packages began to feel like the only
way to tell that time was really passing. Still, when collective
responsibility and self-sacrifice dominate public discourse, skin care
is a liberating exercise in vanity, selfishness, and control—or, at
least, the illusion of it.
