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A new magazine from Roxane Gay offering some of the most interesting and thoughtful cultural criticism to be found on the Web. Our first quarterly is coming in June 2019. We value deep explorations, timelessness, and challenging conventional thinking without being cheap and lazy.

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Aging Ghosts in the Skincare Machine

chelsea g. summers
Gay Mag
Published in
21 min readApr 10, 2018

LLet me start with my skin in the game. In the four months between November 2017 and February 2018, I spent about $520 on skincare products. This number does not include makeup. It does not include shampoo or conditioner. It does not include body lotion. And it is, in all likelihood, a little low. If I pored through every receipt and every debit card transaction, the actual, shameful tally of skincare spending during these four months would hover above $600. Average it out, and that’s $125 a month, more than my $90 Con Edison or Verizon bills, and a little less than a third of my monthly college loan payment, which, at age 55, I’m still paying.

It’s a lot of money, but it’s a lot of skincare. More than a mere routine, my skincare is a baroque dance of cleansers, exfoliators, toners, essences, serums, oils, hydrators, moisturizers, sheet masks, sleeping masks, lip masks, and sunscreen. I perform it — often with the sullenness of a teen — every morning and every evening, and when I don’t, I feel a sense of guilt that I can imagine only as Catholic. My skincare practice is what New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino terms a “regime posing as a regimen.” My skincare is an army of products I’ve marshaled with a single intent: to keep aging at bay.

I am not alone. Last year, the U.S. prestige beauty market — specifically, the stuff sold at marquee makeup stores like Sephora and Ulta or from department store beauty counters — saw sales of almost $18 billion, an increase of 6 percent from 2016, according to market research firm NPD Group. Skincare alone made $5.6 billion of that total, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. Across America, more women (and men) are anointing, slathering, dotting, patting, smoothing, and massaging their faces with more high-end unguents, elixirs, lotions, and potions than ever before. We Americans are awash in a veritable tidal wave of expensive face glop, and we are gleeful to pay for the privilege.

I have not always cared about my skin. Born in 1962, I tanned with baby oil, washed with bar soap, moisturized with drugstore creams, and daubed my lips with Vaseline. Skincare was something rich old ladies did, and I was neither rich nor old. In my thirties, worried about my forehead lines, I…

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Gay Mag
Gay Mag

Published in Gay Mag

A new magazine from Roxane Gay offering some of the most interesting and thoughtful cultural criticism to be found on the Web. Our first quarterly is coming in June 2019. We value deep explorations, timelessness, and challenging conventional thinking without being cheap and lazy.

chelsea g. summers
chelsea g. summers

Written by chelsea g. summers

An ex-academic and a former stripper, Chelsea G. Summers is a writer who’s going places. http://www.chelseasummers.com/

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