On First Treatment Essences
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| That's actually the Clear Facial Treatment Lotion - serves the same purpose for me! |
(Slightly Clickbaity) Headline
At any point in the last year, I would have told you a First Treatment Essence of some kind was essential for me. Now I'm not so sure.
About my skin
I usually stick to more affordable products and use a lot of different products to address features like signs of aging, larger pores and CCs, redness and dull skin. I'm going to call these things I'm addressing "features" rather than "concerns", which is just a personal preference. My skin doesn't need fixing, I just tailor my routine to address certain aspects of it. This may seem a pedantic choice of words but language matters!
I'm 40 with combination skin, prone to CCs but not acne (unless I've used a product that disagrees with me) and my skin is perpetually dehydrated because of the actives I use. My neck is dry, dry as a desert, and very sensitive, so I use an entirely different routine that would be too bland for my face - plus, my neck routine wouldn't address my face skin features.
Introduction
This isn't a review as such, more of a meditation on how my routine fits together (because Sooryehan) but also routines generally, from the point of view of FTEs (First Treatment Essences).
At the risk of broken record territory, Sooryehan has revolutionised my approach to my routine.
And annoyed me, because everything I thought I knew wasn't quite the whole story - you can't think outside the box but your box can grow bigger, as my philosophy professor once said. In terms of this paradigm, the box is now bigger.
My previous philosophy: Long Routines
I am sure, without doubt, that a long routine worked for me.
And as I experimented with products, I'd add stuff in, get bored of other stuff (but not pan it because I have issues finishing products lol), fall in and out of love (and then back in love) with certain products....
My relationship with skincare is fickle and tempestuous. I'll go down the rabbit hole because I've had an idea and it sounds like fun.
I couldn't think of any reason that changing every step in my routine to something with fermented ingredients would be a bad idea! I mean, why not? It might be great!
I definitely learned some things: the barrier strengthening power of ferments was one of the main takeaways. I don't think I would have dared to use AHA or retinal before the Great Ferment Experiment
But ferments, and then more and different ferments, changed my skin for the better and made me want to keep adding more.
I did, admittedly, have a longish routine by the usual standards before this change-up. Ferments, and some extra disposal cash, created a skincare monster!
If something has fermented ingredients, I'm much more likely to try it than if it doesn't. It'll immediately make my ears prick up and my wallet reluctantly opens again...
The glow with ferments is what draws me in but I stay for the barrier resilience. Plus it's fun and they often taste nice. Yes I know you shouldn't eat skincare but I apply everything to my lips so I always take note if it's tasty.
First Treatment Essences
FTEs, though, are often about preparing your skin to better absorb later products. It's a foundational product which improves the efficacy of your routine and tends to have a high reported quantity of a ferment or a number of ferments.
More than this, lots of people (including me) observe that their skin holds on to hydration much better when they use FTEs. And of course the barrier resilence and glow. Never forget the glow!
SK-II Facial Treatment Essence is the OG (as far as I know) and for good reason. It was my gateway drug to ferments.
Turns out I had tried quite a few fermented products before but none of them gave me the same effects as SK-II. Oooooh that famed AB glow!
At last I understood what people meant when they say that a product makes their skin glow.
And this created a monster, hungry for products that might glow more, or differently, and ideally more cheaply. Lol.
SK-II is famous not only for its effects but also it's price. I wasn't going to commit to a full size before I've checked out dupes.
And they worked well - I used SK-II for a month, obvious dupes like Missha Time Revolution First Treatment Essence Rx Pro-ferment and Secret Key Rose Starting Treatment Essence (new version, no niacinamide) worked well.
Missha Time Revolution Artemisia Treatment Essence and the new Missha Artemisia Calming essence/mist work great too, in terms of glow.
Do FTEs need to exist as category?
Could I get glow elsewhere? Absolutely
Could anyone get glow elsewhere? Maybe - some people might not.
But would I have tried ferment without the famous SK-II? This might be a no: I didn't really know about ferment or first treatment essences - I tried SK-II because of its reputation.
Do FTE actually prep your skin? Good question, me. On the one hand, they're very light and appear to be designed to absorb quickly. But there are plenty of other products with a reportedly high amount of ferment that appear to be formulated similarly - which may be as good.
And then there are other products, besides first treatment essences particularly, that also claim to help the rest of your routine absorb better, like Sulwhasoo's also famous First Care Activating serum. I've read plenty of fellow ABers saying that these sorts of products definitely make a difference to how the rest of their routine feels / performs.
Is it just marketing? Maybe. But the OG SK-II claims that
Not only this but SK-II also says "up to 10 years of visible skin damage and signs of skin aging diminished after one year of PITERA™ useage" (edit: I linked the website so you could check it out yourself, I purchased mine from Stylevana with my own money, it's not an affiliate link)
SK-II suggest that you use it for a month to get the full benefits, which I did and I was very impressed with what it did for my skin. I did, however, find I got similar benefits using just the toner, SK-II Clear Facial Treatment Lotion. However, that use it for one year claim has me interested. Not enough to buy a full size, not right now, anyway.
And really basic products, like Mixsoon Bifida toner, seem to have a similar (if more subtle) effect, in terms of some glow. The Mixsoon, for example, certainly absorbs well in and of itself. Doesn't leave my skin feeling like it was smoothed and, if I'm honest, as ready to absorb the next product. But it definitely dries quickly!
I hadn't used FTEs beyond Missha Artemisia for a while and it's now named a calming rather than treatment essence, should that matter.
I've just added an out of date (by three months, smells fine, looks fine) Missha Time Revolution FTE Rx Pro-ferment back in. It could be a coincidence or confirmation bias but my irritable neck seems less reactive...
Oh and I just got a Decorte product that could be used in the FTE slot so just wait for me to 360 on this whole issue!
Schrödinger's Feminism
All skincare tends to be marketed with language focused on improving your skin, from elasticity and anti-aging to improving skin firmness and reversing skin damage.
This emphasis on improvements isn't a big leap to using products to perfect your skin - it's not what the manufacturers are saying, of course, but it's the implication.
There's endless upkeep with an anti-aging routine. Sure, there is with skincare generally but anti-aging takes work - actives, a schedule for actives (I'm not going to say skin cycling), hydrators to reduce the side effects of actives, trying products to make sure their efficacious and binning them if they aren't (or swapping if you're lucky).
So what's the problem with all this? It's not just about capitalism and consumerism: it's arguably diversionary tactic to undermine female power.
Here's Naomi Woolf in 1990 on this:
More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers. Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West's controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret "underlife" poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control.[..]As women released themselves from the feminine mystique of domesticity, the beauty myth took over its lost ground, expanding as it waned to carry on its work of social control (The Beauty Myth: 2015, 10-11).
There's so much more I quote from this book. I won't, I think this is enough to get the gist of it.
OK, I quote a bit more below, I can't resist!
A running theme will be that I don't have an answer - that I will still address my skin "features" and use skincare a) because using something (at least cleanser, sunscreen and moisturiser) is necessary for not having dry, itchy skin and b) because it brings me joy.
Do I worry about feeding into this cycle because I purchase these products? Kinda.
I also worry about what we're saying to the younger generations. Presuming it's genuine (and it may be a prank), even people in their teens and early 20s asking on r/Skincareaddiction and even r/AsianBeauty about preventative retinoids, preventative botox.
I worry about our collective body image. And I try to remind myself that a lot of us start skincare because we've got dry or oily bits of skin that are just uncomfortable to live with. I don't mean look (although you could read it that way). I mean how our skin feels.
But there's a positive side to this: the OG AB blogger Fifty Shades of Snail (and I'm sure there's more but Fiddy was one of my first blog loves) writes about it. And as she says in this post, she expands on it in her book (which I own):
The book, for reference, is Skincare For the Soul by Jude Chao.
There's something else to consider that I absolutely hasn't thought about (and this is absolutely why I love feminism): because Wolf says something awesome in the introduction to the 2015 edition:
And social media – though some say it heightens pressures on young women to feel physically self-conscious – also breaks down the barrier between the consumer of media and the producer, and opens up many more models of stylishness, coolness and glamour. On balance, I think we have come a long way. It is a great thing for young women and men today to grow up taking for granted that they are entitled to analyse and criticise the mass media ideals that are presented to them, and to define beauty, glamour and style for themselves. And it is a fantastic gift to both genders that they get to define a feminism of their own in which to do so. In that spirit, I hope you enjoy – and then make your own unique, creative and irreplaceable use of – this abridged new version of The Beauty Myth (9-10).
Yes! I love all of this :) Again, I could quote loads of this book, all of it!
One last bit from The Beauty Myth:
We must bring it up to date with the beauty myth, to get it once and for all. If we don’t, as soon as we take apart the beauty myth, a new ideology will arise in its place. The beauty myth is not, ultimately, about appearance or dieting or surgery or cosmetics – any more than the Feminine Mystique was about housework. No one who is responsible for the myths of femininity in every generation really cares about the symptoms at all (77).
And this is what Wolf is trying to get across: that endlessly debating whether skincare (or makeup or clothing) is part of the problem when it comes to female enlightenment is misdirection. As Wolf says, it's a symptom, not the actual issue.
Seriously, this book is well worth reading if you ever want to consider these issues in more depth. She does also make the point that she's really talking about the ideology entrapping middle class women historically (which therefore largely means white women in America). A lot of my feminism is from white middle class women because that's what I needed to write my PhD. There will be a lot more work out there that's more up to date and speaks from an intersectional position, I just don't have it to hand in my mind the way I do with Wolf.
In the spirit of this, I wore my piggy print dress out the house for the first time ever, to a therapy session. We discussed the Inner Critic and I mentioned that I love the dress but I'm too embarrassed to wear it (not flattering enough, too yellow, juvenile print) but I wore it today because fuck what someone else might think of me.
I'm slowly trying to put into practice what I intellectually know to be true, even if emotionally my Inner Critic argues with it: I should define myself by my own standards which do not have to align with contemporary mores and also, most people just don't care what other people are wearing or look like. At most, it's a fleeting judgment that they're unlikely to say out loud anyway.
I mentioned to my partner one thing I forgot to say to my therapist - that I have been catcalled for both being attractive and being ugly. If you're my age and from the UK, you'll know who Grotbags is - back when I was a goth, some random shouted Grotbags at me! Lol. Although, as my partner pointed out, that's partly a function of living in a dilapidated, rundown UK seaside town.
My therapist said maybe I'm brightening someone's day by wearing such a cute print. Maybe I'm giving someone else encouragement to wear something fun. I'd like to think that's true: that wearing what I want and not giving a fuck could make a tiny ripple in the collective consciousness that could be interpreted as a feminist act.
Which is, of course, predicated on buying a cute piggy print dress in the first place - but you can't escape capitalism if you're going to live in a city. You could make your own clothes or buy from charity / thrift stores, which is a good point.
Either way, I'm going to take the piggy dress as a point of resistance. If we go back to Sawicki, who I quoted in my first blog entry, clothing absolutely counts as discourse and there's a language to it - so why not subvert the norm (the Beauty Myth) by wearing something slightly (or very) outrageous?
Final Thoughts
Back to skincare!
SK-II was my gateway drug to ferments and I'll always love it for that and for what it did for my skin.
Is it strictly necessary to use a first treatment essence? Probably not but a lot of people report that nothing else comes close to SK-II.
Plus, a first treatment essence is likely to be suitable for all ages and skin types. Whereas the Sooryehan products definitely aren't going to be right for everyone. For me, though, I strongly suspect I'll keep purchasing Sooryehan because I'm pretty sure it's barrier building and all round great for me!
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