This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

This is the waves. Welcome to the waves. Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and today are skin.

Every episode you've got a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off of our minds. And today you've got me,

Shannon Paulus, a senior editor at Slate. And me, Jessica Defino, a freelance beauty reporter

for Slate, the New York Times, Vogue, and more, and the writer of the weekly newsletter, The Unpublishable.

Today we're going to be talking about skin care and why it's kind of a scam.

I have been interested in this topic for a really long time.

Before I came to Slate, I was a health reporter,

Wirecutter, the New York Times's product recommendation site,

and as a science journalist,

I've spent a lot of time both there and at

slate digging into the science behind skincare and what works and what doesn't

work. And I'm really excited to talk to Jess today who recently wrote a piece for

slate on why maybe the entire premise that your skin needs all this additional and

expensive care is misguided.

Jess, why did you want to talk about this?

This is a topic that I can't stop thinking about

because for most of my life I was obsessed with products and prescriptions. I've always had

problem skin and tried everything, acutane birth control, antibiotics, retinoids,

steroids, plus you know all the over-the-counter skin care you could possibly

imagine. I basically had like a breakdown in my mid-20s and stopped using

skin care entirely because I was so frustrated and my skin was so damaged and lo and behold my skin healed more in that week than it ever had before.

...