Exfoliating is Queen

On the Importance (and Queenliness) of Exfoliating

YAAASS QUEEN-ahem-Greetings, denizens of the internet. I come at you today with many opinions and unscientific facts about the importance of exfoliating. Our skin is a living organ and should be treated with the utmost care and consideration. That means we should throw a lot of time and money at it. What else do we have to do with our time? It's not like we have to be productive members of society, right? NEVER PRODUCTIVE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY. Let's exfoliate!

Why Should We Exfoliate?

First, let's talk about what exfoliation actually means. To exfoliate one's skin is to remove the dead skin cells from the skin's surface either manually or chemically. Loofahs and scrubbing towels would fall under manual exfoliation. Chemical peels and exfoliating masks fall under chemical exfoliation.Second, it's important to exfoliate for several reasons. As people get older, everything slows down in our body. Your skin's cell turnover cycle is included in this pain in the butt slowing down that comes with aging. This means that as we get older, our bodies won't shed our dead skin and grow new skin like it used to. Built up layers of old and dead skin can leave you feeling rough, dry, and leathery. It can also lead to clogged pores which can cause blemishes and breakouts. Exfoliating regularly help slough off dead skin cells and help bring up new skin underneath. New skin is better able to absorb moisture. Regular exfoliation can keep your skin looking and feeling healthy.

How to Choose What's Right For Me?

That's a harder question, fam. To be perfectly honest, it would depend on you and your skins. Some people have way sensitive skin where even a little bit of exfoliating chemicals will result in a hot bruised mess. Some people's skin may be so resilient that you can take a power sander to their face and it would be no sweat. You would just have to try some things.If you were going to use a chemical exfoliant, do yourself a huge favor and patch test it first. Place a little bit of product on a small patch of skin. Observe closely to see if you get a reaction from it. If your skin is anything like the diva skin mine is, it will not hesitate to tell you when it doesn't like something.If manual exfoliants are your thing, I would say definitely be gentle. Yea, you want to slough off your dead skin cell but the last time I checked, you still need most of your skin. Be gentle with yourself.

Do I Exfoliate My Body?

Most people I know do it sometimes. A lot of people I know do it when they aren't lazy. I am not one of these people. I get super freaking extra with my bodily exfoliation. I exfoliate my body every week. Every. Week. IT'S NOT MY FAULT I LIKE BABY SOFT SKIN. I LIKE TO TOUCH SMOOTH SKIN OK?!-ahem-A lot of people use a loofah or to exfoliate themselves. And I think a loofah is a fine tool to use for body exfoliation but about a year ago, something more magical was introduced to me.Friends and family, this is a Korean Italy Towel.Italy towels were invented in Korea (Busan to be exact) and are called Italy towels because they use viscose fabric that, at the time, were imported from Italy. The Italy towel is basically an exfoliating glove that you use during a bath to gently buff off dead skin cells from your body.To use the Italy towel, it's recommended that you draw a hot bath for yourself and sit in it for about fifteen minutes until your skin is soaked. You can tell your skin is ready for the towel if you rub on it with your finger and gross gray pencil eraser shaving looking residue sloughs off of your skin. (I know that's gross. At least I didn't take a picture of it, ok?) Then, you would just take an Italy towel and gently exfoliate your body to get all the gross gray dead skins off of yourself. You can also stand in the shower and use the Italy towel but you have to wait until your skin is equally soaked and from my experience, it's just easier to sit in a bath.This is a total game changer for me. I used to hate "mag-libag" (Tagalog word for exfoliate specifically meaning body exfoliating; "libag" is the gross gray things that come off your body) because it was often painful, eliciting memories of my mother scrubbing the shit out of my skin whilst I sit/stand there in agony.Using an Italy towel is a lot gentler and actually worked a lot better than scrubbing the shit out of my skin.

Let's Talk About Face Exfoliation!

For facial exfoliation, usually there are two types: chemical and manual.Chemical exfoliation usually involve alpha hydroxy acids(AHA) and beta hydroxy acids(BHA). If you were looking at skincare ingredients, glycolic acid would go under AHAs and salicylic acids go under BHAs.AHAs penetrate (not a good enough use of the word penetrate) into your skin and dissolve dead skin cells while also promoting your skin cell's turnover cycle (repair and regeneration).BHAs have the same function with the added bonus of penetrating (not a good enough... never mind) into your pores to clean them out. This is why salicylic acid and other BHAs are recommended for people with oily or acne prone people.There are many facial washes that contain AHAs and BHAs. If you have a facial wash or other chemical exfoliants, I'd be careful with them and only use them every once in a while. I had a pretty traumatic experience as a young teenager who overdid it on salicylic acid and ended up cracking and burning my skin. Be gentle on thy skin.My favorite method to exfoliate my face, however, is by using manual exfoliants. Currently, I use a facial wash with microbeads in them to help exfoliate a little. I also use exfoliating pads on my face.I have the Skinfood Rice Brightening Scrub Foam and it's gentle enough but gives my face a good cleaning. It also has the tiniest beads in it to help exfoliate my face. Although it does help, the bulk of the exfoliating is done by my exfoliating pads.I use the Neogen Biopeel Advance Treatment Gauze Peeling.The pads have a criss cross pattern on one side that I sweep in circular motions all over my face and neck to gently slough off dead skin cells. You then turn the pad over and use the cottony side to wipe off any dead skin cell left on the pad. Rinse with water and you are done.I prefer manual exfoliants because A.)I'm kinda freaked out by chemical exfoliants since it literally burned my face as a teen and B.)I feel more productive, feel more that it's doing something by using a manual exfoliant.OF COURSE, one can still go HAM on manual exfoliants and injure yourself. The point of it all is to find what works for you. There isn't only one correct answer to all of this since we're all different people walking all different walks of life, inhabiting different sacks of meat and water (don't I paint a great picture).Whichever form of exfoliation you so choose to do, I hope you have amazing, glowing, soft skin. So go forth and conquer.