After Sun Bliss: Exfoliating Bar Soap

Oh, the pure, unalloyed joy of unwrapping a fresh bar of soap to take into the shower. Specifically, this one, the SheaMoisture 100% Virgin Coconut Oil & Shea Butter Soap, $7.50 CAN, amazon.ca. A hefty half-pound of lightly scented, skin-nourishing happiness, it also contains finely ground coconut fruit and shell to gently exfoliate. All you have to do is rub it all over your skin after a day spent outdoors to gently remove grime and now past-it sunscreen. It’s as soothing as a head scratch but for your entire body.

Ah, bar soap. The world has slowly capitulated to body washes and in the mid teens bar soap sales declines precipitously as millennials viewed it as unhygienic and hard on skin so only men should use it on their rough, beardy faces. Body wash was convenient (shudder) and bar soap was a fusty relic of your grandmother’s powder room. (Remember all those pale blue, shell-shaped guest soaps in milk glass dishes?) And thus began the global domination of body wash and pump hand soaps and we lost the sensorial delight of unwrapping a fresh bar, the engraved letters still crisp under our fingers. I remember reading someone declare that if they won the lottery, they would open a new bar of soap every day for their bath.

Unlike pricy scented bars from fragrance brands — my favourite Sisley soap is now $135, which is patently absurd — SheaMoisture’s coconut oil and shea butter soap is very well priced. Each half pound bar (227 grams) is only $7.50, so you can make a pleasing stack of them in your linen closet to greet you every time you open the door to grab a towel. Because that too is one of life’s great pleasures: being welcomed by tidy, all-white towers of neatly folded linens, towels and an ample soap stash. It’s the little things.

Glowing Skin For the Super Lazy

With most things in life, you have to put in the work to see results. You can’t eat Twizzlers at four p.m. every day and expect to lose weight. This is tiresome and unfair.

Dermalogica Age Smart Skin Resurfacing Cleanser, $63, dermalogica.ca, is made for anyone who finds multi-step skincare routines needlessly complex and time-consuming. Made with easily-tolerated lactic acid (the greatest exfoliant for older skin because it also moisturizes) Dermalogica’s Age Smart Resurfacing Cleanser is a two-for-one hero.

Use it as a regular daily cleanser (no more than once a day) but then twice a week turn it into a mask. Massage it in and instead of immediately rinsing it off, leave it on for a minute (start slowly) and then rinse and note how the gentle-but-mighty lactic acid handily lifts off dead skin cells, speeding their turnover and leaving your skin noticeably smoother and glowing. And just like that, you’ve just given yourself a fuss-free exfoliating mask.

Follow up with Dermalogica’s Biolumin-C Vitamin C Gel moisturizer, $89, Sephora.com, for even more brightening (gràce à vitamin C) and you will have just done good things for your skin with practically no effort. And don’t forget to use sunscreen afterwards to protect your newly peeled skin. You wouldn’t want sun damage to ruin all that effort.

Remedial Winter Self-Tanning

Self tanner can be a bad boyfriend: promising true love, but delivering only misery and patchy, orange colour. (OK, so maybe this metaphor doesn’t work.) By this point in the calendar I’ve had a few months of standing for hours in blazingly hot showers while turning my skin lizardy, ashy and dry.

What to do? Scrubs made of sugar or salt granules suspended in oil scare me. If anyone is going to slip, fall and die in the shower it’s yours truly.

So instead, I rip through most of a tube of Aveeno 60 Second In-Shower Facial, covering my whole body with something meant to be applied sparingly to faces. I feel very Marie Antoinette extravagant as its glycolic acid formula smooths away all the roughness on my ‘gator-like exterior.

Then the right self-tanner, discovered through much trial, streaked heels and Cheeto-orange error.

Avène Moisturizing Self Tanner Face & Body’s light gel cream spreads easily over arms and legs (with no tell-tale dark patches or streaks) for natural-looking colour. My torso stays pale and hidden under clothing at all times, so only the sticky-outy bits need doing. (Picture a turtle’s limbs emerging from his shell. That’s me. I am the turtle in this scenario.)

And for my face, Sisley Self-Tanning Hydrating Facial Skin Care smells ‘heavenly-slash-expensive’ (spoiler: it is) but the result is a hydrated ‘day on a Mediterranean chaise longue’ glow. (You know it’s chaise longue, not chaise *lounge*, right? Just wanted to clear that up.)

Once you’re over the shock of having spent a lot on Sisley, you’ll see that it’s worth it, as you’ll look naturally tan and never like someone heading into their fourth season on a Bravo housewives franchise.

A final note: please do not accessorize your tan with a French pedicure. Thank you.