We are now six months into life with varying degrees of quarantine/stay-at-home/safer-at-home orders, and wearing face masks has become the norm for most of us. My sister tells me that whenever she does a Target run or goes to the pet store to buy 70 pounds of dog food for her four lab mixes, she parks in a spot, grabs her face mask, and announces, “Mask up!” whether anyone is with her or not.
Along with adjusting to wearing a piece of fabric over half of our faces, many of us have also noticed an unwelcome side effect of wearing masks: skin troubles. For some, it’s breakouts popping up around the mouth and jawline, appropriately dubbed “maskne”; for others, it’s excessive dryness and even itchiness or irritation. If this sounds familiar to you, you’re probably wondering what you can do about it. This is wear masks (the self-care kind, not the protective kind) really shine!
A skincare mask should be used as an S.O.S. treatment rather than a staple of your regular routine, but we all have some S.O.S. going on these days. Aveda’s Botanical Kinetics Deep Cleansing Clay Masque and Botanical Kinetics Intense Hydrating Masque deliver the perfect one-two punch to tackle both face mask-wearing woes at once! In fact, they were originally created to work as a team. First, apply a layer of the Deep Cleansing Clay Masque after you’ve cleansed your skin. Leave on for five minutes, then remove the mask and follow with Intense Hydrating Masque. Leave on for10-15minutes, give yourself a nice facial massage to really work it in, then remove what’s left. This ritual, which should take about 20 minutes, will leave your skin and, hopefully, your spirit, feeling more balanced and calmed. Use this time to light a candle, drink some tea, take some deep breaths, or whatever helps you feel more chilled out.
So next time you’re feeling a bit blah from a day of masking up, give a different kind of masking up a try!
-Ethan