It is said, ‘Glamour is about feeling good in your own skin’. I too, believe that every girl draws a huge deal of confidence from the way she looks outside and feels inside. And by looks outside I mean, having soft supple skin and silky hair. This is my short story about how I stopped using facewash and how this experiment changed my skin for the better.
When I turned 13, my mother handed me some face wash and told me to use it daily to keep my face squeaky clean and dust free. To be honest, using face wash back then, made me feel much cleaner and fresher and I was just addicted to the strawberry aroma it left behind. During my teenage years, I had mildly troublesome skin with pimples and scars that appeared on my face anytime but luckily disappeared in no time as well. And once I entered my 20’s, the occasional pimples and scarring disappeared completely and I had absolutely clear but naturally dry skin. However, this didn’t last too long. By the time I turned 23, I started getting pimples and scars again. This time I couldn’t blame puberty. What next?
The paranoid girl in me, started using medicated face wash two times a day and invested in some exorbitantly expensive overnight healing cream. After patiently following this regime for a year, I realised that my face had become 20 percent clearer, but the glow was still missing. Also, the days that I forgot to use the overnight cream, I woke up with dry, flaky skin that I had never experienced before. It seemed as if using such an expensive cream had actually been counterproductive as my skin had become overly dependent on it.
One fine morning, when I woke up and looked at my dull face in the mirror while brushing my teeth, an idea popped into my head. In a desperate effort to see a difference, I decided to stop using any chemical based product on my skin for the next 30 days. It would be my personal experiment. Thereafter, I started washing my face, using plain tap water, without using any product at all. I used to massage my face with my fingers and gently rub my nose to get rid of dust and deposits on skin, as the water streamed down on it. I followed this regime twice a day for a month. Here are the results:
Week 1: At the end of week 1, every time I refrained from using face wash I was sceptical that I might be allowing dust to settle into my skin pores. But I continued to follow the regime anyway. As per common opinion (including my mother’s), water wasn’t enough to cleanse skin properly. Besides, I didn’t see any change as such, apart from my skin feeling less dry, thus, making me double minded about following it through.
Week 2: During the second week, no new random pimples popped up on my face. This was a pleasant relief. I thought to myself, that something must definitely be working. And that’s when I started realising the kind of damage chemicals do to our skin.
Week 3: At the end of week 3, I noticed that my skin was feeling less drier and the blemishes of old pimples and scars, slowly fading. I could see a glimpse of my earlier healthier skin, once again. This change made me want to tell everyone who advised me against it, ‘I told you so…’.
Week 4: Motivated by the surprising results, I continued following the no face wash rule. What happened in the span of the last seven days was almost shocking. My face had more or less completely cleared up with its former glow restored. For the first time, I had a pink glow on my cheeks and my face appeared brighter, cleaner and fresher, just like when I was a child (and used no face wash). And not to forget, my skin felt so soft that I felt like touching it all the time!
My experiments with giving up on using cleansers have been pleasantly successful and I plan to follow this regime from now on. It’s worked for me and given me relief from overly dry skin.
Images: Shutterstock
