Beauty Professionals Are Abandoning Their Beauty Products. Why?

My latest for the New York Times (sort of).

Carly Cardellino didn’t understand why her skin was breaking out — and didn’t understand why she didn’t understand. 

As the former beauty director of Cosmopolitan Magazine, she was a professional skincare expert. She had “800 products” in her house, she said —a perk of the job — and several others in her pores at any given time. Still, the area around her mouth was suddenly red, spotted and swollen, and none of her go-tos were helping: not the luxury moisturizers, not the medicated creams prescribed by her dermatologist (who diagnosed her with perioral dermatitis). 

“I was like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’” 

Cardellino wondered if the cinnamon she sprinkled in her morning cappuccino could be the culprit. “I cut that out of my diet,” the content creator said, “but that wasn’t what calmed my skin down.”

She didn’t see improvement until her aesthetician, Sofie Pavitt, suggested she simplify her skincare routine.

“Within two days of doing literally the bare minimum” — applying two or three products per day, down from nearly a dozen — “my skin cleared up,” Cardellino said.

via Instagram

Beauty editor Jessica Ourisman can relate. After the freelancer, whose work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and Allure, received a clinical skincare treatment on assignment, her “nose became so dry that it was uncontrollably flaking on the sides and the tip,” she said, and “red bumps popped up on my face.” 

“Nothing, not even prescriptions, would get them to go away,” Ourisman explained. Months of trial and error later, her facialist recommended “stopping everything.” Ourisman’s face was fine in five days’ time.

Laura Read, a former beauty influencer from London who used to collaborate with brands like Revlon and L’Oreal, said she struggled with breakouts, milia and eczema for years before considering “the amount of products I was testing and trying.” When she stripped her routine down to just cleanser and moisturizer — “no serums, no toners, no face masks, nothing,” she said — they resolved.

Call it a trend. “People are stressing out their skin by overusing skincare products,” said Mary Schook, a celebrity aesthetician who works with model Karolina Kurkova, Vogue contributing editor Marina Rust and Ubah Hassan of “Real Housewives of New York.” 

Her high-profile clients often come to her glazed and confused, she said: They have access to the “best” products and procedures money can buy — and have the “worst” skin of their lives.‌

“I used to mostly see socialites and celebrities to prep them for photoshoots,” Schook said. “Now every appointment is a recon mission.” She almost always tells clients to abandon their excessive (and expensive) skincare rituals.

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Still, as 12-step regimens trend on social media and skincare sales trend upward — about 85% of TikTok Shop sales come from the health and beauty category, per Nielsen IQ, with facial skincare products among the top sellers — the industry elite aren’t the only ones experiencing stressed skin. The consumers they’ve influenced to buy, buy, buy are breaking out, too.

Dr. Whitney Bowe, a dermatologist and the author of “The Beauty of Dirty Skin,” noted an uptick in patients with skincare-related skin problems. Although she’s known for her work on how psychological stress affects the skin, “you can also physically stress out your skin,” she said.

“We know that an increase in the number of products can cause skin barrier issues,” agreed Dr. Sonia Khorana, a UK-based physician specializing in dermatology.

Stressed skin can manifest as dryness, redness, dehydration, sensitization, breakouts, blotches, dermatitis or even flare-ups of underlying skin conditions like acne, rosacea, eczema or psoriasis, according to Dr. Bowe.

Luckily, “our skin is actually very smart,” she said. “And if you give it the basic essentials, it will help repair itself.”

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This is the introduction I wish the New York Times published last week when it published my piece, “Too Many Products Can Stress Out Your Skin. Here’s How to Scale Back.”

Unfortunately, Carly Cardellino and Jessica Ourisman’s stories were cut from the final draft because — as I found out post-writing and -reporting — this particular section of the NYT does not permit journalists to be quoted as sources.

This is a fine policy in most circumstances. Reporters can be biased when it comes to the industries they report on, and when reporters use other reporters as sources, it can create an out-of-touch “echo chamber” effect that doesn’t serve readers. It makes sense.

In this case, though, the usual concerns do not apply. Beauty reporters are the story. That they’re being injured by the industry they report on is newsworthy. It’s important. This cohort is a bellwether for beauty consumers; their experiences are relevant to the readers they influence and educate (if not to save them money, then to save them from future medical issues).

You can read the article that was eventually published here. Revised introduction aside, the piece offers a stripped-down overview of how skincare products can “stress” the skin and a simple guide to “de-stressing.”

After reading — that link is a gift link, so the article should be free — head back here for more context and expert commentary that was edited out of the final piece (including how the journalists I interviewed are now reevaluating their work in the beauty industry).

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On what causes stressed skin:

In order to understand how skincare can lead to stressed skin — and how to de-stress it — it’s important to first understand the skin.

The skin barrier, or stratum corneum, is the body’s outermost layer and the immune system’s first line of defense, said Dr. Tamia Harris-Tryon, a professor of dermatology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. It exists to protect against environmental threats, known as stressors. These include sunlight, pollutants, allergens, irritants and inflammatory or infection-causing microbes, according to Dr. Harris-Tryon.

“The barrier is like armor in that it breaks down aggressors so that they are rendered harmless,” explained Ron Robinson, a cosmetic chemist and founder of BeautyStat Cosmetics. But much like your brain, there’s a limit to how much stress it can handle. 

Prolonged exposure to any of the above stressors — sunlight, pollution, et al — can result in physically stressed skin. 

However, as Dr. Bowe noted, an increasingly common source of stressed skin is skincare itself.

“Modern society’s extensive use of cosmetics might be pushing the limits of how much your skin can protect you,” Robinson agreed, as every single ingredient applied to your skin represents a potential stressor for the barrier to assess. 

What’s more, many products are specifically meant to disrupt protective components of the skin barrier: sebum (the skin’s natural oil), pores (which excrete sebum), corneocytes (also known as dead skin cells) and bacteria (part of the skin’s microbiome). 

Cleansers, for instance, frequently claim to remove oils, which are there to seal in hydration, said Dr. Greg Altman, a cosmetic chemist and founder of green chemistry company Evolved by Nature. Serums often promise to penetrate pores, which exist to excrete sweat and sebum and “are not meant to receive anything into the body,” he explained.

Exfoliants are made to eliminate dead skin cells, but these cells hold the skin’s Natural Moisturizing Factors, or NMFs. (Cardellino said she was “very shocked to learn” about NMFs recently, after years of reporting on skincare.) Spot treatments are formulated to kill bacteria, but can kill the strains that are important for healthy, high-functioning skin too, Dr. Harris-Tryon said.

The more products wear away at this 0.002-millimeter layer of cells, the dermatologist explained, the less able it is to fulfill its protective purpose — and the more problems may pop up.

This often makes beauty devotees dig their Baby Foot-smoothed heels in. They apply more products to soothe the issues caused by other products, Schook said, ultimately increasing stress and exacerbating symptoms. 

“The consumer sees that and they [use] more,” said Robinson. “It’s almost like we created a monster.”

On why ‘actives’ aren’t always advisable:

Actives are the powerful ingredients that “activate” surface-level changes in the skin — including retinoids, vitamin C, niacinamide, benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, glycolic acid, lactic acid and hyaluronic acid. 

While actives are often celebrated for “addressing wrinkles or evening skin tone,” Robinson said, impressive aesthetic results can come with consequences. It’s confusing, but it may help to think of skincare in terms of other beauty industry offerings, like hair styling tools (which can cause heat damage) and teeth whitening strips (which can wear away at tooth enamel and increase sensitivity). Plenty of products that deliver a particular look do so at the expense of overall health.

“For me personally,” Cardellino said, “it was actives overload that compromised my skin.”

On ‘manual stressors’:

Dr. Bowe advises against manual stressors like washcloths, because “you’re actually rubbing and traumatizing the skin with that,” she said. The same goes for dermaplaning razors, which are used to remove facial hair and dead skin cells but are actually “removing the surface layer of your skin,” she warned, as well as microneedling tools, which are intended to smooth uneven texture but “literally poke holes in your skin barrier.”

On non-topical skin support:

To further maximize a minimal regimen, consider non-topical skincare. (Yes, other forms of skincare do exist!) 

“The skin is an organ and it responds to the same things all the other organs do,” said Dr. Harris-Tryon. “Exercise, high-quality sleep — those things help your skin and will decrease the need for an extensive regimen.” Ditto orgasms and facial massage. 

Diet can play a part in de-stressing, too, she said. Research shows Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids “play a critical role in normal skin function” and “dietary supplementation” can support a healthy barrier.

Anxious about leaving your antioxidant vitamin C cream behind? Relax. Coating your skin in the stuff “has not proven any more effective than simply eating vitamin C,” according to Dr. James Hamblin, author of “Clean: The New Science of Skin.” Load up on fresh fruits and vegetables and let your barrier be.

On how beauty professionals are faring without their usual products:

Read saw improvement within three weeks of minimizing her skincare routine. Asked when she plans to reincorporate her usual serums, toner and face masks, she responded, “Never.” 

Read is no longer a professional beauty influencer. “My skin is better than it’s ever been,” she said.

For Cardellino, paring down her products didn’t only de-stress her skin — it also changed her approach to work. After twenty years of testing and recommending thousands of skincare products, “I will now turn down a job if I know a product is not going to play nice with my skin,” she said. She’s not against applying the odd active, but “I don't want to misinform people.”

“If your skin is freaking out, just wash your face with the boring cleanser,” she said. “Use the boring moisturizer."

Ourisman doesn’t anticipate adding her old favorites — vitamin C, exfoliating acids, retinol — back into her regimen either.

“This is wild,” the beauty editor told me. “I actually can’t even remember what retinol I used to use.”