Such Brave Skin

many links and sales, actually

What could I POSSIBLY highlight from the art world that feels more pressing than the reopening of the Studio Museum in Harlem?? I cannot wait to visit this collection next month. This work by one of my favorite artists, Adrian Piper, is perhaps not the singularly most important in their entire collection, but felt very relevant to today’s essay.

I started writing this newsletter with the intention of highlighting some of the independent skincare brands I use every day and love very much, because oddly it is something I get asked about a lot and I also firmly believe in championing small businesses.

At the same time, I am feeling really conflicted about beauty in 2025. It is impossible to look out into the abyss of advertisements (from billboards to social media creators) and not notice the pendulum swinging harshly toward an extreme new level of youth fetishization. Everyone is suddenly more skinny than has been en vogue for a while, and their faces are suddenly more taught, and there is an undercurrent of conversation suggesting that being transparent about your surgical procedures and interventions is a new kind of brave feminism. When I walk around my neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, on any given sidewalk there is a 27 year old girl who has inadvertently made herself look prematurely 45 in the pursuit of looking 23 forever.

And this is where I typically get caught up, because I am sitting at the intersection of where my own judgement of someone else’s decisions meets my personal firmly held beliefs in each individual’s sovereign right to decide what happens to their own body. After the September shows, I wrote about assimilation signaling in fashion, and I definitely understand at this moment why people want to assimilate their appearance to conventional culture more strictly than ever before. A known abuser and criminal sits in the highest office in the land, and the issue of that fact is only eclipsed by the knowledge that societally, that was not enough of a deterrent to keep people from voting for him. We are not in an era of women’s safety. And I wonder, if we have lost the right to the type of bodily autonomy that is self-determining, such as healthcare around pregnancy or gender-expression, is it really any great win to gain cultural comfort around elective procedures that are primarily being used in pursuit of preserving youth? Especially if that youth is more highly held as the standard of women’s value every day?

In the past I’ve written about Feminized Debt in relation to pay-over-time schemes copiously available for consumer packaged goods and apparel and accessories – the product categories where spending is dominated by women. The wage gap persists, but what does grow each year is the list of expectations that women face to look ever younger, more pert, less susceptible to reality. The endless cascade of new products and hacks and brands and celebrity faces is overwhelming, and a little shameful, and especially disparate from any progress toward body positivity, self care, or any of the other marketing terminology that proliferated our feeds just a few years ago.

True to its form, the more thought I gave this topic the more my algorithm fueled the fire. This now-viral video from Jessica DeFino :

“You’re funneling your finite life-building resources of time, money, energy, effort, attention and head space into becoming more beautiful.”

This essay from father_karine (sub-heading Long Live Old Flesh):

“If a happy consumer is indeed a bad consumer, the inferiorized woman is more valuable than gold in today’s America. Once we are infected with the disease (the belief that our bodies are deficient and must be improved), we can be sold the cure. The antidote for our inferiorized bodies is a never-ending slew of cosmetic surgery, makeup, serums, cleansers, pharmaceuticals, moisturizers, spray tans, cosmetic dentistry, hair masques, hair removal, manicures, facials, the list goes on. New (or at least “improved”) products and services are “invented” each and every day to keep the great SHEconomy churning.”

And more abstractly, about the self-awareness that fuels all of this, a wonderful new passage from Isabel Cowles Murphy, titled Make Vanity Embarrassing Again.

Iconic Mel C. for JW Andersen looking absolutely fucking fantastic while also not trying to look 27

A lot has happened to me in the last decade. I went from 30 to 40, I raised a baby into a preteen, her dad died, the pandemic happened, I moved, I took a new level of control over my career… these are all stressful events. I recently explained to my daughter that my older skin needs different treatment than her younger skin, and she replied “your skin is not old, it has just achieved a lot,” which is one of the nicest ways I have ever heard anyone say they look tired.

And frankly, even with all of this, I do not give a flying fuck about looking younger than my age. I think I look great! Having borne close witness to very untimely death, I genuinely think every day I get to grow older is a gift from god, and if I walk down the street and the general public RECOILS IN HORROR at my new wrinkles or the grey hairs that keep showing up, I am of the mind that this is an issue that the public needs to deal with, not something that I need to contort around. I am game to accept the horrors that accompany living another day. I am very, very hopeful.

So this brings me to the original intent of this newsletter, which is to highlight the products that have kept me feeling exceptionally beautiful every day, made by people I know, and keeping the balance of my value squared on my whole self and not just my visual proximity to my teen years.

Here it is: everything I use on my beautiful old skin.

WONDER VALLEY

For Black Friday through Cyber Monday, Wonder Valley will be 30% off sitewide, with free domestic shipping. If you purchase on Cyber Monday, you will get a free olive oil (and theirs is truly the most delicious olive oil of all).

I use their Hinoko Body Oil, which leaves me smelling like a delicious block of burning wood (compliment) and is best applied directly out of the shower before you’ve even fully dried off in order to lock in the most moisture. I’m also a big fan of their Wash & Scrub Set, great for a very luxurious shower but also excellent as a gift for a beloved friend. And last, I’ve been using their Yuzu Shampoo and Conditioner. While I’ve been growing out my natural hair, finding something gentle and moisturizing that doesn’t smell like a chemical candy bar has proven more challenging than I thought it would be.

MONASTERY

Their sale has already started and is going through the 1st of December, and they are offering 25% off any products online. If you know me you know Monastery is one of my holy grail brands. Their products just work on my skin - not too harsh, not too gentle, always soothing and the best scents. I use:

Attar Floral Repair Concentrate, which has healed my eczema outbreaks, repaired sunburns, breathed new life into dry winter skin, and is the base layer of every gua sha routine I do on my face. Their Flora Botanica Cream Serum recently rebuilt my skin barrier after I tore it down too much with harsher products, and its repair was subtle but very noticeable. And last, their Sage Cleansing Oil. It took me a long time to get into cleansing oils, and then longer to learn how to do it right, but now this particular is such a critical part of my rotation I can’t imagine living without it.

My dream product of theirs is The Deep Red LED Mask, which I do not yet own but am planning on buying one day soon (maybe during this sale). Everyone I know who has this says it’s the best red LED they’ve ever used.

CAP BEAUTY

On November 20th CAP will mark down up to 40% off (their biggest sale of the year), until December 2nd. If you buy from CAP you also get free shipping with the code ANJA+CAP. This is one of my favorite stores for discovering new pieces to me routine - Kerrilynn (Coyote Swan)is truly a leader in the skincare space and you can comment below if you’re also waiting for her to reopen her New York store.

I recommend the CAP Beauty facial suite - which you can buy as a bundle or as separate items; the Blue Soothing Cleanser, the Serotoner, and Crema. She has been rolling out these products over the past two or three years slowly and methodically, and they are calming, gentle, and soothing, both in effectiveness and in the application experience. My other favorite product that I always stock up on from CAP when they mark down is Marie Veronique’s Multi-Retinol Night Emulsion, which my facialist Amity Murray recommended as a mask or an under-eye treatment. It’s INCREDIBLY effective.

ACTIVIST MANUKA

Activist’s sale starts on the 24th of November. I have to be honest, when manuka honey became a thing, I was underwhelmed by most brands and the gap between their promises and the actual product, but Activist is next level. Their manuka is singularly high quality, and truly very healing - I love their products. I use the Manuka Honey Mask once a week when I want to unwind, and I just started using the Green Botanical Body Oil, which smells like a fir forest and almost instantly healed a persistent eczema outbreak on my hands. And the most important thing in my pocket at any time is their Honey Lip Balm, which I wear during the day but also at night as a treatment. Your lips will never be so soft and fluffy!

It’s totally possible that for someone, these products have erased wrinkles. They haven’t erased mine, but that’s not a priority for me, and it’s also not a marker of healthy skin. What they have done is make me feel better in my own skin, and regardless of anyone’s personal choices, feeling good in your skin is the ultimate goal of longevity, however you achieve it.

So mark your calendars - but in case you don’t like to do that I also linked all of their IG profiles above, so you can follow and support and be notified about sales.

Yours, immortally,

Anja

p.s. This newsletter contains some links that, if you do end up buying something, will pay me an affiliate fee. I finally have a ShopMy account and I do not regret this at all because I promise to continue only recommending things to you that I actually love.