Pour some acid on meeeee.

-your tired, sad scalp singing 80s songs due to agony, bail her out

I’ve posted a fair bit about scalp skincare over the years, most notably when I wrote about washing hair with cleansing oil for Racked (the same place I shared my acid deodorant hack). When I bring up scalp skincare, I find that lots of people comment and message me to say that their scalps feel bad: they’re itchy, dry, flaky, painful — despite lots of attempts at soothing that skin with medicated washes that contain stuff like coal tar. I don’t think you have to live like that.

One of my favorite things about kbeauty haircare is that it’s not just focused on treating the strands of hair; hair is understood to begin at the scalp, which means that scalps get treated like skin. Which makes sense since…the scalp is skin.

Continue reading “How to wash your hair with acid” →

I’m working on a really cool story for Racked (here’s what I’ve written there so far) and going on a work trip in a few hours, but I wanted to write a quick post about something I’ve been experimenting with. There’s nothing like a new beauty experiment to keep one’s mind off the stress of unwanted travel — but apologies if this is rushed and disjointed because I’m editing at the airport between a full-body scan and attempt to track down an express manicure! ahaha

I’ve come to feel that shampoo is basically the work of an evil god. My skin hates surfactants, making facial cleanser shopping difficult (I’ve since found two low-pH cleansers that I like). That hatred extends to my scalp, which gets itchy and peely when I use shampoos. I’ve found some I like, but even then, my scalp was in poor enough condition when I went to get my first facial that I couldn’t get microdermabrasion done. 🙁

Continue reading “Experiment: Washing Hair with an Oil Cleanser” →

Sorry I’ve been gone so long! I recently started writing freelance articles about beauty, which you can find here. I’ll somehow try to balance writing for fan-b and writing for not-fan-b. These days I’m pretty easy to find on Twitter if you need to track me down.

I recently shared the skincare routine that has finally helped me bust through the hormonal cystic acne deadlock that persisted for years, but I want to share some of the things I’ve learned along the way as an addendum to the routine.

This is a highly specific-to-me, unscientific account of what has worked for my skin and what I’ve learned. Plus there’s a giveaway of a bunch of my favorite products for dealing with acne at the end of the post.^^

Continue reading “17 Things I’ve Learned About Dealing with Hormonal Cystic Acne” →