Staunchly, vol. 52: Play It As It Blaze

(Originally posted: 4/7/18)

Well, nothing says, “Weird week!” like a tardy, Saturday-morn Staunchly.
 
I couldn’t quite find my pace this week, and a couple interactions threw me off my game. (If you know me, you know my game is everything to me.) Safe to say Mercury retrograde did her dirty! That said: there are also a lot of positive changes afoot, according to my gut and my horoscope, and I’m excited to see how things unfold. Don’t you just love how vague I’m being? Guess you better watch this space. 

:)

Now for some fun things. Staunchly got herself a new look! Courtesy of best friend of the brand, Lauren Flanagan. It’s hard to improve on perfection, but Lauren was up for the challenge. I’m obsessed with the new logo suite she created. Who knew a bond forged in 1995 would have such a tangible impact on the 2018 brand identity of a commodified feminist alter-ego? 

On that note, I have a cute little Staunchly for you today – no real world news. Just two fun things. Sit back. Relax. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and play the new Cardi B and let’s dig in. 

Introducing: Joint Didion.

My friend Lauren Dunitz and I are starting a podcast! It’s about books, weed, pop culture, and feminism, but it’s really just an excuse to get high together and compare the Sternwood sisters in The Big Sleep to Paris and Nicky Hilton. Every other week, we’ll meet up, light up, and discuss (and spoil!) a book we both read.
 
And lots of other stuff too! Even sober, we live in tangents. For example, last night we got together to talk about Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, a dark, neo-Gothic-feeling novel about the literal and metaphorical filth of child abuse and how women twist and shape and reduce and distort their bodies to create coves of self-protection. Yet somehow, we talked (a lot) about George of the Jungle! And Leslie Mann’s model of Cheekbone-Forward Femininity! The craziest part is that it kind of worked.
 
Joint Didion is dropping 4/20 (lol) and will come out every other week.
 
It’s odd and lo-fi, but it’s got hustle. Just like us.  

I’ve been streamlining my skincare routine of late, ever since I read this in a GOOP interview with icy German skin witch Barbara Sturm:
 

People are overdosing on too many different products without paying attention to the ingredients inside—or the interplay between those ingredients. This leads to skin conditions like breakouts, perioral dermatitis, or enlarged pores, which are all the result of inflammatory processes.

 
Cut to me Googling perioral dermatitis at 4AM and concluding that every breakout I’ve had in the past two years was probably the consequence of irritating ingredients (or hormones—blessed womanhood!) and not clogged pores, as I’d previously thought. I nearly jumped out of my bed in epiphanic glee. I imagine this is precisely how Edison felt when he invented the light bulb, also on the fifth hour of a silky Klonopin cruise.
 
I’ve never been one to blindly mix products, but I’ve been really careful recently about isolating my super active toners and serums and using them with more restraint. That means no twice-daily P50, Good Genes, or even Vintner’s Daughter. Instead I’ve been spreading them out and layering them with gentler products. Acids + exfoliation are key to a glowy face—a once-every-two-days swipe of P50 makes me come alive—but they can be brutal if you don’t keep your eye on them.
 
Which brings me to my latest discovery: Boundless Solid Oil by 8 Faces. You guys. This. Oil. I don’t even know how to describe it because thinking about it gets me all verklempt. But I’ll try.

It’s a dreamy beauty balm you can use it anywhere on your bod. I use it as a moisturizer. It scoops out solid (they give you a mini spatula which honestly makes you feel like a mini version of yourself mixing up fudgy brownies in your Easy Bake Oven in 1997 which is equal parts satisfying and triggering), then melts between your palms into a fatty, spreadable oil. It sinks into your skin like butter on a pancake and smells like a rich woman’s garden in the Pacific Palisades.
 
I press it into my face, covering my cheeks with my hands and closing my eyes as I inhale the sweet smell of fresh citrus—a few precious moments of respite before the world breaks me that day.    
 
The formula is lousy with amla berry (a powerful antioxidant) and features tangerine oil to boost cell regeneration, primrose oil for elasticity, and sea buckthorn to fight inflammation.

All of that is, in my mind, almost beside the point. It’s comfort food for your skin and that’s why I use it. While I love knowing it is keeping my skin ~ right and tight ~ it also just feels so good. It’s like macaroni & cheese with squash snuck in. It doesn’t strip or sizzle or scrub. It just soothes. In this world—with this face!—that’s plenty. 

Staunchly yours, 

Carey