ARTWORK: Milly Yates
Drinking, or Rather, Cleansing from the Fountain of Youth By Zoe Mitchell
Self-care. That hyphenated word which carries with it both an ethereal desirability, and involuntary eye roll. Or maybe that’s just me. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s to wash our hands. Yet perhaps the health professionals aren’t the only ones telling us to clean up our act. If you follow any influencer, news outlet or friend who participates in a pyramid scheme, you’ll find nearly everyone’s been subliminally marketing for us to wash our face. Being a fiend for the fashion industry, my social media has been inundated with information
such as ‘take time out’, ‘don’t beat yourself up for feeling burnt out’ and ‘now is a time to reset’. And what do all these articles suggest as a cure-all for my pandemic blues? My career crisis? My creativity rut? A facemask, of course. In times of global crisis, people search for what brings us together and seek to identify which industries sink or swim. And in 2020, the traumatic spread of COVID-19 has given a 10-point booster to the already accelerated rise of glycolic acid, cleansers, toners, Dr. Barbara Sturm, and The Ordinary. If you can’t find the link between any of those terms, first of all, lucky you. Secondly, I’m talking about skincare.
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