This is a blog about The Soap

2004-04-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Day three of The Soap and my skin feels very, very smooth, but DRY. This was not the gay skin plan! I did not want my gay skin to be like a brittle old queen who smokes too much and secretly hates himself! I wanted gay skin fresh like the morning dew, or like a 19-year-old blond farm boy all sweaty and loading hay bales with his chaff-speckled muscles, and then later he is drinking a Budweiser at the town tavern and hey, Other Farm Boy, you look pretty good in those Wrangler jeans and hey and hey and oh my. That is the kind of gay skin I was going for.

However, despite the fact that I have to slather on tons of my expensive moisturizer after using The Soap, so that now my skin care routine is entirely too bourgeois all the way around, my view of The Soap is still generally positive. Except for the smell. The smell is too overpowering for soap. Also, because I need to check on my face a lot for this Soap experiment, I have been touching it (my face) often throughout the day and that is becoming annoying, not to mention unsanitary.

---mimi smartypants

2004-04-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

On Friday I distributed the samples of Soap to my fellow scientists. We have heard much about The Soap and we are looking forward to having soft, supple, refined, cultured, tasteful skin. Basically, we want gay skin. We would like our skin to live in a beautifully decorated loft and listen to a lot of opera. Various testimonials to The Soap all but promise this.

On Saturday I was entirely too hungover to think much about skin care, so I washed used The Soap for the first time on Sunday evening. I did not "splash my face with water" using hands, as the instructions depicted, but instead used a washcloth to wet my face. The former seemed too messy and overdramatic. Like a Noxema commercial, with the splashing done in slow motion.

I enjoyed the amount of lather The Soap created, and it felt pretty good as I massaged it in circles. (Ahem. Oh baby.) After rinsing, I was slightly disturbed that my skin did not feel wet! Maybe some scary mineral in The Soap makes water bead up on you like a freshly Turtle-Waxed car. My skin felt kind of tight and dry, but I waited to apply moisturizer (MAC's Moisture Feed) until right before bed, to try and keep the experiment pure.

Sadly, I failed at keeping the experiment pure, as I forgot to bring The Soap into the shower with me, and since I'm a shower completist and must wash everything, I was forced to use the Aveeno Clarifying Wash that was in there. I guess I could have skipped the face wash since I had just been asleep, and sleep is not particularly face-dirtying, but that seemed wrong. Today I will jump back on The Soap wagon. So far, my skin does not feel gay but it does feel slightly rough and uneven (I have paused in my typing about three times now to run my hands over my face like an amnesiac blind girl). Maybe that will go away once the "toxins" have been purged by The Soap.

By the way, The Soap's instructions are an orgy of comma splices.

---mimi smartypants

2004-04-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

I tried my little square of The Soap the night I received it (Friday). I followed the directions very closely. I did notice 1) There is a very strong scent. this scent seems to be trying to hide some other scent 2) I wanted MORE LATHER and 3) my skin felt soft after I used it. I think i jinxed my skin by reading the thing about how it is POSSIBLE that your skin could appear worse after the first few days of use, because my skin is kind of freaking out. I know there are lots of other factors that could be contributing to the Skin Freakout (I will not document these at this time) but i couldn't help thinking it is The Soap's fault. Of course I will get over this setback if things suddenly appear clear and gay. I am waiting for the clear and gay. I want to love The Soap, but it is just too soon for that.

2004-04-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

Received sample-sized block of The Soap from Mimi Smartypants yesterday.
First Wash, Sunday morning, around noon. Very hungover. The Soap has a thin lather, and feels kind of warm on the skin, with some kind of faint menthol action in the background. As specified in instruction #3 I applied lather to my face (but forgot to add a few drops of water to it as specified in #2) and rubbed gently for 30 seconds (timed on the bathroom clock.) Afterwards my face felt fine - a little tight/dry but that might be from shaving yesterday.
Second wash after a shower, 5PM. I have to put away my regualr face-washing products because I absentmindely washed my face with the usual Johnson&Johnson Clean&Clear while in the shower, and then finished off with a Clearasil Sensitive Skin with Aloe pad. I don't want to overdo it and I also want to eliminate the possibility of other mundane soaps interfering with The Soap. Face feels dry but forehead oiliness is gone. May add some moisturizer in a few moments.