This column first ran in Valerie Monroe’s newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, which you can subscribe to on Substack.
Q: Is there any value to two-step cleansing (oil cleanser, like Clinique’s Take the Day Off cleansing balm, followed by a gentle liquid face cleanser)? Fair-skinned, 69-years-old and prone to skin cancer, I slather on sunscreen every morning — but I’ve read that to clean it off, I need to use an oil-based cleanser before a foaming one. I find this to be a pain in the neck. Is it necessary?
A: Being a minimalist (Can I be less than a minimalist? A mini-minimalist?), I do not like two-step anything if it can be accomplished in one step — or less. But I, too, wondered last summer in Hawaii whether I was removing the many layers of sunscreen I’d applied all day long in the broiling sun. So I asked Heidi Waldorf, M.D., for her thoughts.
“Double cleansing is more a marketing invention than a medical necessity,” she said. It (along with even greater multistep cleansing routines) became ubiquitous with the popularity of K-beauty in the U.S. “Unless you wear long-lasting and/or waterproof makeup, or you enjoy the ritual of double cleansing, one cleanser should be sufficient to remove sweat, sunscreen, makeup, and dirt. For resistant makeup, you can use a makeup remover wipe, cleansing oil, or balm alone,” she added.
Waldorf uses Neutrogena gentle makeup remover towelettes or Almay eye-makeup remover pads interchangeably on the rare occasion her Caudalie Vinoclean Gentle Foam Cleanser leaves something behind or if she’s feeling too lazy to wash with water. “A quick fix if I’m wearing more than my usual makeup is to add a pump of Caudalie Vinoclean Makeup Removing Cleansing Oil to my foaming cleanser in the shower,” she said. “The key when washing is to avoid stripping your skin or irritating your eyes. Your skin should feel supple after washing, not tight or dry.”
“The only time I believe in double cleansing is if you have anything on your skin at the end of the day that’s designed to be difficult to remove,” said dermatologist Doris Day, M.D. If you’re not dealing with a long-lasting or waterproof product, a single cleanse with micellar water or any cleanser you like is enough, she said.
I tend not to wear waterproof makeup because … why? There’s also the issue of potential toxicity. But at the beach, I use water-resistant sunscreen. And I’ve found that a few swipes of micellar water on a cotton pad followed by a water rinse makes my skin feel clean. On other days (meaning almost always), I wash my face with a CeraVe Foaming Cleanser Bar, which gives me just the right amount of foam but doesn’t leave me feeling dry.
And here’s a little riddle I just thought of:
What’s the difference between washing your face and cleansing it?
Around $45.
As a new beauty editor, I once wrote unadoringly about a cleansing brush, one of the first of its kind; I think I said I threw it under my bathroom sink where devices went to die — which, unsurprisingly, elicited an enraged email from the PR friends who sent it. I just couldn’t see the point of it. Then I watched, stupefied, as the cleansing brush phenomenon, with intense marketing fire behind it, took off like a rocket. Did we all brush our way to a better complexion? I think you can guess the answer.
As usual, a seemingly simple question — this time about face washing — turns out to be more complicated than I thought. There are those (by which I mean beauty companies) that assert a difference between a face wash and a facial cleanser, the former being better for oily skin and the latter for sensitive skin. While it’s true that different formulas can have different effects, what the product is called seems largely a matter of marketing. I discovered recently that some of these same people would also have us believe it’s necessary to wash your face in the morning (it’s not) to remove any toxins that have accumulated while you enjoyed your beauty sleep. (Sometimes, when I read beauty copy, I wonder whether it’s a credulity test: How far will it go before I’m forced to say, “Oh, c’mon”?)
Washes and cleansers have the same purpose — to remove makeup, sweat, and whatever else might be accruing on your skin whenever you’re not washing or cleansing it. Doesn’t “cleansing” sound fancy, though? Like something you should be doing for your skin rather than just washing it? That’s no accident.
“Cleansing” is rooted in late Old English clænsunge, which means “a purifying castigation; chastity, purity.” According to a story by Austin Perlmutter, M.D., in Psychology Today, theologian John Wesley is said to have uttered the now-famous line “Cleanliness is next to godliness” during a 1778 sermon, after which washing oneself took on significance beyond basic hygiene and became a route to social acceptance. (And an excuse for wildly racist messaging.) The soap industry started producing large quantities of body and face washes, exploiting the connection between God and cleanliness, and using religious language to sell their products.
Though the connection is less blatant today, there’s still resonance with the clean-skin-is-better-skin idea that fuels a multibillion-dollar facial-cleanser industry. Why else would there be a double-cleansing trend or a triple-cleansing trend? If you chose to, you — a skin-care penitent — could spend all day washing your face.
But I assume you have better things to do.
Originally published on July 9th.
