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By Valerie Monroe
If you’re interested in feeling happier about your appearance—especially as you age—you might like reading what she has to say about it. For more of her philosophical and practical advice, subscribe for free to How Not to F*ck Up Your Face at valeriemonroe.substack.com.
Can’t get enough Valerie Monroe? There’s more at https://valeriemonroe.substack.com.
ON A RECENT visit to Tokyo, my granddaughter, M, introduced me to a new friend at lunch. “So,” I said to the girls, “you guys meet at work?”
My question evoked a fit of giggles from M’s friend. But M, with an eyeroll and a patient tone you might use on a bewildered toddler said, “Grammie, we’re 6. We don’t work! We met at school.”
“Oh, right, of course.”
The conversation quickly moved on to favorite pizza toppings, but I wondered how long I’d be able to carry on my silliness with M before she’d want a more . . . reality-based Grammie. She’s still delighted to engage with her puppet fiancé, Monkey-Monkey, even when she can see me speaking in his high, squeaky voice next to him. I’m just not ready for him to retire.
Though I remember loving every phase of my son’s development, I don’t want this stage with M to end—partly because she is so voluble and engaging and up for anything.
“You inspire me, Baby,” I told her a few days ago over FaceTime. She’d said she’d fallen hard in the park and scraped her knee but cried only a little because she was able to talk herself into feeling okay again.
“What’s ‘inspire’?”
“You make me want to do things better,” I said.
I was tempted to tell her I wanted her never to change. But that’s not really true: What I don’t want to change is her unrestrained, lusty imagination; her incessant curiosity; her sturdy and implacable confidence.
And I fear for her development: A 2018 poll surveying 1,300 girls between ages 8 and 18 and their parents found that between the ages of 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels nosedive by 30%. This information isn’t new, but the story is getting worse; according to a 2023 report, the levels of distress typically seen in middle or high school girls are now apparent in girls as young as 8. Since 2017, girls’ confidence levels are lower; their perceptions of their abilities, including perceptions of themselves as leaders, have significantly declined; and they’re more likely to report increased stress, pressure, and depression. The decline is most evident among fifth- to eighth-graders.
The role social media plays in all this is probably enormous, which suggests that controlling exposure might have a modulating effect. Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, authors of the book .The Confidence Code for Girls, say recent research shows that when girls follow high-achieving women on social media who share their interests, their worldviews expand. Still, the numbers are shocking and concerning.
M says when she grows up she wants to be an astronaut and a doctor. I’m not crazy about the astronaut idea, but I hope nothing ever gets in her way of setting her sights on the moon.
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Q: Is there any value to two-step cleansing (oil cleanser, like Clinique’s Take the Day Off cleansing balm, followed by gentle liquid face cleanser)? Fair-skinned and prone to skin cancer, I slather on sunscreen every morning—but I’ve read that to clean it off, I need to use an oil-based cleanser before a foaming one. I find this to be a pain in the neck. Is it necessary?
A: Being a minimalist—can I be less than a minimalist? A mini-minimalist?—I’m not a fan of two-step anything if it can be accomplished in one step (or less). But I, too, wondered last summer in Hawaii whether I was removing the many layers of sunscreen I’d applied all day long in the broiling sun. So I asked HNTFUYF DermDiva Heidi Waldorf, MD, for her thoughts.
“Double cleansing is more a marketing invention than a medical necessity,” she said. It (along with even greater multi-step cleansing routines) became ubiquitous with the popularity of K-beauty in the US, the K standing for Korea, of course. “Unless you wear long-lasting and/or waterproof makeup, or you enjoy the ritual of double cleansing, one cleanser should be sufficient to remove sweat, sunscreen, makeup, and dirt. For resistant makeup, you can use a makeup-remover wipe, cleansing oil, or balm alone.”
Waldorf uses Neutrogena gentle makeup-remover towelettes or Almay eye-makeup-remover pads interchangeably on the rare occasion her Caudalie Vinoclean Gentle Foam Cleanser leaves something behind or if she’s feeling too lazy to wash with water. “A quick fix if I’m wearing more than my usual makeup is to add a pump of Caudalie Vinoclean Makeup Removing Cleansing Oil to my foaming cleanser in the shower,” she said. “The key when washing is to avoid stripping your skin or irritating your eyes. Your skin should feel supple after washing, not tight or dry.”
“The only time I believe in double cleansing is if you have anything on your skin at the end of the day that’s designed to be difficult to remove,” said dermatologist Doris Day, MD. If you’re not dealing with a long-lasting or waterproof product, a single cleanse with micellar water or any cleanser you like is enough, she said.
I tend not to wear waterproof makeup because . . . why? There’s also the issue of potential toxicity. But at the beach, I use water-resistant sunscreen. And I’ve found that a few swipes of micellar water on a cotton pad followed by a water rinse makes my skin feel clean. On other days (meaning almost always), I wash my face with a CeraVe Foaming Cleanser Bar, which gives me just the right amount of foam but doesn’t leave me feeling dry. It’s also easy to pack and doesn’t leak in a little plastic soap dish.
