All You Need Is Love and Hawaiian Tropic
If you have read anything about skin care in the past 20 years, you know one thing is consistent: we should be wearing sunscreen every single day.
I love lists and following orders. My morning skin care routine is as follows:
- Wash my face with water, just like #ElizaBest
- Glycolic acid toner to balance my pH because science!
- Vitamin D serum. It’s like rubbing an orange on your face but less sticky.
- CeraVe moisturizing cream. The thick stuff. Glop it on.
- Hawaiian Tropic Sheer Touch SPF 30
I’m 46, and I look 44. This regimen works.
Easy, Breezy, Beautiful
You learn skin care from your mother. Patsy only believed in Noxema, and that was just for treating your skin after a 2nd-degree sunburn. A favorite summer activity was peeling off long-ass strips of skin while I caught up on Days of Our Lives. June in my house was wild.
(Yes, that is Alec Baldwin, pre-Jack Ryan in the Noxema ad voice-over.)
Needless to say, my skin is trash, and I see my dermatologist once every three months. I walk in and say, “Give me the gun. The liquid nitrogen gun.” This is the only way I like to feel the burn.
When it comes to my existing skin damage, I use the phrase that no one uses when the news is good: It is what it is. The current goal is to prevent any more aging or cancers, so I wear sunscreen everyday. I’ve tried many brands over the years, from Olay to Clarins, from EltaMD to Dermalogica, and I always come back to Hawaiian Tropic Sheer Touch SPF 30. It absorbs quickly and doesn’t leave a white residue. I’m pale enought as it is. It moisturizes and gives a dewy glow. And it doesn’t irritate my eczema.
But most of all, I wear Hawaiian Tropic because it smells like sitting by the pool, reading a Regency romance. It smells shaking the sand from your terry cloth beach towel. It smells like hooking up on a catamaran pulled up by the dunes. It smells like summer, even during these cold, dark New England winters.
Remember the Light of the Sun
When YA Author Kayla Ancrum, tweeted out the following last week, I smiled so big:
Hey wanna hear something really gay?
A girl I was in love with back in high school had S.A.D. And when it was winter, and had been grey for a while, I would put sunscreen on in the morning before school so that she could smell it on my skin and remember the light of the sun.— Kayla Ancrum (@KaylaAncrum) March 6, 2020
First, this is totally wonderful and totally gay. A straight boy would never.
Second, it’s true that sunscreen can help counter seasonal affective disorder. I’ve conducted a study, sample size of one. My Lexapro works so much better with Hawaiian Tropic. You don’t need dairy to boost Vitamin D; you need to smell like a pina coloda. And like Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, sunscreen is FSA eligible.
Maybe add a little Bain de Soliel oil on your wrists. Dab a little Coppertone behind your knees. Slather Australian Gold on your neck. Fight the last gasps of the winter blues. Prevent wrinkles. Find love. Broad spectrum avobenzone can do all that.
I hope every baby lesbian in high school takes this idea and runs with it. Shoot your shot with sunscreen! At minimum, your face will thank you later.
This is not a sponsored post. Buying Hawaiian Tropic at CVS helps me get more Extra Bucks, which also brings me joy.Â
