Illustration: by Luci Pina
Before the pandemic hit, skin care was booming. Then came a year of isolation that forced many to work and socialize primarily online. Lockdown has inadvertently created the perfect environment to stare at your own pixelated pores, whether on social media (where you can instantly zap yourself into beauty via endless filters) or on apps like Zoom. What happens to a skincare obsessive after a full 12 months of this?
Charlotte Palermin have some thoughts on the subject. A co-founder of a skincare company Gods and a cosmetology student, Palermino is known for sharing her outspoken opinions on social media. She’s passionate about evidence-based research and clinical verification, and she’s funny about it, too. During the pandemic, she threw herself into ICT Tacby developing his account, @charlotteparlerto 236,300 followers via explainers (like how to hit without leaving traces of Vaseline on your pillowcases), demystify (like demystify the recent controversy behind petroleum jelly), and hacks (like how to help your chapped lips with “moisture sandwiches”).
Below, she talks to The Cut about where skincare is heading post-COVID-19, what to do if you’ve damaged your skin barrier, “skinimalism,” and why skincare actually skin is not self-care.
In order to understand where our skincare routines are going, we need to understand where things are right now. What trends have you seen throughout the pandemic and what types of products were popular?
When the pandemic started, everyone was like, I’m going to try the crazy treatment I was too scared to do because if I mess up it’s okay because I’m a recluse, and no one needs to see me because I can just turn around from my zoom. I don’t know if you saw on Google Trends — In fact, I wrote an article for teen vogue on repairing the skin barrier – but basically there was a slight increase the ordinary AHA 30% + BHA 2% scrub solution just as the pandemic hit.
We spend way too much time staring at ourselves on screen, and as a result, we’re looking for that final photoshop-filtered image, like the Instagram Paris filter, right? Everything that brings us there. Resurfacing treatments are the fastest to get those really quick results, but after that you have to deal with all the peeling, flaking, redness, and we’re just trying to sort that out. We are looking for products to essentially deliver from the sins of what we were Actually do to our skin.
Does that mean people are using more products than ever?
It was like that at the very beginning. People were going crazy. When I hear someone ask, “How can I use a retinol? A acid? A skin ? and then they will add another asset, I’m likeyou will have no skin.
Part of that is because people couldn’t get to in-office treatments. If people couldn’t get to a beautician or if they felt they had no choice, they would say, Oh I’m just gonna do it at home ’cause I got time now. But you should never Derma Roll at home because you will only scar. When you talk to dermatologists about their experience in clinics, a lot of what they’re doing is fixing what people have done at home – and we’re talking about real damage, like cystic acne it could be the result of Derma Rolling and spreading an infection on your face, or insanity hyperpigmentation because someone uses a crazy peel then goes out and forgets they had a peel the night before and didn’t wear sunscreen.
What products or treatments should people try if they are in repair mode, now that they have experienced resurfacing?
The thing to remember is that if you’ve really damaged your skin barrier, anything you put on it is going to sting. Something as sweet as La Roche-Posay Toleriane Double Repair Face Moisturizer will sting a little, and the most important thing is to take care of your skin and not use anything that resurfaces. Avoid retinols. Avoid glycolic acids.
Think of it like cutting your skin. When your skin is sensitive, one of the worst things you can do is keep hurting yourself. When you cut yourself, what do you do? You put a bandage on it. You don’t take another knife and start cutting.
Give yourself a good month using only face creams. You want to use things like ceramides because they essentially mimic the cholesterol and fatty acids of your skin barrier. glycerine is a great one because it will hydrate. Dimethicone is actually a good ingredient. Vaseline is a skin protectant — people with eczema who have weakened skin barriers tend to put Vaseline on their face as it allows your skin to rebuild itself. Now if you have very oily skinobviously those recommendations will change, but if you’re stripping your skin the best you can do is slather on moisturizer and avoid the sun, and if you find a Solar cream that won’t sting or burn, so absolutely go for it. Within a month, your skin should be back to normal.
I keep hearing about the rise of “skinimalism”. Do you expect us to use fewer products when everything gets back to “normal” and we start socializing and going out again, instead of sitting at home in front of our computers and mirrors?
I think we are already on the way to more skinimalism because people have hurt themselves. The thing is, if you use a 20 percent vitamin C, a retinol, a glycolic acid, a salicylic acid, and you use one of these skin cleansers, you physically injure your skin. Very few people could escape unscathed. My hope is that most people, when they put their hands in the fire, don’t keep putting their hands in the fire.
So what kinds of skincare products and treatments are we going to try post-pandemic?
Everyone talks about how people focus more on skincare and less on makeup, but the great thing about makeup is that it gives instant results. For my part, I use skincare ingredients for an instant result. do i think that face oil will ever replace my face moisturizer? No. I need my humectants and my emollients and my occlusives; Leave me alone. But do I use a face oil like Highlighter because it lasts all day and reduces my wrinkles all day? Absolutely. So I think you’re going to see people looking for skincare-makeup hybrids. They will try to kill two birds with one stone.
In-office procedures are going to experience a crazy boom. I’m in beautician school, and that’s the one thing they keep mentioning: once it’s done, people will want that human connection, and they’ll want to see people. That’s part of it – the social aspect of going for a facial or going for a peel or just going to see your dermatologist, especially if you’re a regular.
In terms of treatments, people will always be concerned about acne and hyperpigmentation. With wrinkles, I like to joke that the reason we care so much about them is because they are a sign that we are slowly dying and people don’t want to die.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of more non-skincare experts on platforms like TikTok — people who aren’t derms, who don’t have a beautician’s license, who are not chemists, who do not develop skin care products. Who can we expect as the authority on skincare in the future?
We have always had non-experts. Influencers have been talking about luxury skincare for years.
With TikTok, it doesn’t matter if you have a big platform because you can go viral anytime. The scary thing is that social media rewards outrage. As we’ve seen, whether it’s politics or skincare, outrage isn’t necessarily a good thing. Nuance is good, but social media never rewards nuance. It’s scary how one person with a megaphone can have such an impact. I see people say that heavy sun exposure stop skin cancer. I’m like, I had shit cut off my body. No, this is not the case.
I keep asking myself why am I doing this. Throughout the pandemic, the only people who have seen me daily are my mother, my father and my sister. Why do I care if they see me with a perfect face? And what’s also really interesting is that we literally cover the lower half of our face, but everyone is so worried about getting a pimple on their chin.
No one will see you without your mask, so why are we in such a rush about it? Before the pandemic, I wasn’t filming videos of me talking about skincare, and, really, it’s because I’m home and had nothing to do, so I started doing these videos, and they started doing great on both counts. TikTok and Instagram. I catch up, where I am, I don’t like this part of my face. It’s like, No, you’re only saying that because you’ve been editing a video for an hour and staring at your reflection. It is not normal.
It’s too common in the beauty industry to say that skin care is also self-care, and that message has grown stronger throughout the pandemic, as we’re all at home and weighed down by the news. Do you think we’ve embraced skincare even more as a way to relax and soothe?
Doing my skincare is probably the only time I don’t have my phone in my hand, reading the news and feeling anxious. So it’s kind of a moment of detachment, which can be nice. But I get really nervous about calling skincare self-care. It’s good to take time for yourself. It’s good to have rituals, but I think they can go too far. And if it gets excessive, it’s not great.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money on skincare, and you don’t have to need skin care. It is optional. There are other things you need. You need human connection. You need to make sure you are sleeping. For me, it’s a bit more self-care, and all of these options are free. I get nervous when I see brands leaning a little too much into self-care talk, because self-care is a needand i don’t want anyone to feel like anything in skincare is a need other than the basics of health, like sunscreen.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
