Every night when I perform my nocturnal ablutions, I gather up all my products in a little assembly on the bathroom counter and begin the process, working through my roster of creams, goos, potions & lotions. The other day it occurred to me to tally up all the various products I use, and I was semi-shocked to find that that number is seven.
Seven!
Does this seem like a lot? Does this make me a slave to my goo? Have I bought into the Beauty Industry Myth? Am I a product whore?
In my defense, my daytime routine is much more streamlined than this: 
an all-over facial moisturizer and a sunscreen. If I'm feeling particularly crinkly, I'll use an extra dab of eye cream. And every other day in the shower I use a micro-whatsis scrub (also Garnier).
Honestly, while I'm performing my routine, it doesn't seem excessive. I wash my face with Cetaphil, use that brilliant Almay remover to get whatever eye makeup the Cetaphil missed, then I hit the vitamin C serum. I was using the Bliss Sleeping Peel Serum, which I loved, but the stuff was $60 an ounce. So now I've replaced it with the Garnier Skin Renew Serum, and I like it just as well. (Plus, it's 12 bucks for 1.7 ounces, and my math is shaky, but it's at least good enough to figure that out. I do wish Garnier would lay off the fragrance a little, though -- their products all smell like fruit baskets.) Full disclosure: I alternate the serum every other night with a version of Retin-A cream that was also much less than the Bliss product. (Ah, we love those Mexican farmacias.) When the products are less costly, I'm not so miserly in using them, and I also don't feel bad about putting them on my neck & décolletage as well as my face, which is important when you're a giraffe like me. After the serum comes the moisturizer, then the eye, lip & neck treatments. Which might seem excessive to some, but I am positively devoted to my Clarins lip treatment -- that stuff is magic. It seriously reduced the fine lines around my mouth, I swear. (I'm a Clarins devotée in general, you may notice. Their products really agree with my skin and I think that once you find a line that works for you, you should stick to it.)
So I dunno. Is the industry (the Cosmetic-Beauty Industrial Complex, as it were) pulling a fast one on me? Or am I hallucinating that I actually look not-too-shabby for a 42-year old person? It helps, I'm sure, that my mother drilled the necessity for sunscreen into me when I was just a whipper (and a few spectacular and excruciating sunburns when I was a kid really drove the point home). I never, EVER leave the house (especially living where I live) without an application of the Clarins UV Plus -- that stuff is brilliant and I don't care how much it costs, I'll never stop using it. So I wonder -- are all these products really doing what I think they're doing, or am I a victim of marketing and magical thinking? What do you think?
Tell ya what: tell me how many products you use every night & morning in the comments box. I'll draw a name randomly from the comments Tuesday morning and whomever wins will get a little package from Style Spy with a buncha fun product samples I've accumulated to try out. Also, let us know your holy grail skincare product -- the one thing they would have to pry from your cold dead cream-applying fingers before you'd give it up.
Have a good weekend, everyone! Wear your sunscreen!!
Photos: Style Spy
