Stop Telling Me About ‘Self Care’

Neither pricy products nor time-sucking routines will transform your looks or your life. Want self-care? Keep it simple.

“You see this face? Look! You see this?!” That’s my Great Aunt Dorothy, in her 70s and pointing vigorously at her smooth complexion. “Soap! That’s what I use on it. Soap!” Back in the 1980s, you see, an employee at Aunt Dorothy’s neighborhood pharmacy recommended a specialty facial cleanser, uninvited. Bad call. By the time the still-pretty grandmother of five strutted out of that store, wig and dentures intact, the entire staff was surely ready to chuck their own stash of specialty products for an Ivory-and-water combo.

So I kind of saw a pattern recently when a pushy local lady, upon seeing my middle-aged self, put down a festive gift basket I’d won at a fair and swapped in a shiny plastic bag filled with some crazy-expensive tube of cream, which she happens to sell. It wasn’t for my cheeks and forehead, this cream (and no, I don’t use soap; my nightly “routine” is simply shmushing a little Lancôme cleanser onto my face for half a second and wiping it off with a Puffs tissue). You know what this cream was for? My arms. My arms. Apparently, this product, which smells disgusting by the way, is designed to tone skin. Rub some in every day and reap upper arms that…