Does my face look snatched?

Plus a natural (and waaayyyyy more affordable) alternative to ceramide skincare.

Image pulled from Ojai’s Instagram.

When Sara, the facialist, sat with me on the blue sofa under the big glass window at the front of Ojai, a skincare salon in the heart of de Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam, she asked, “Is there anything specific you want to focus on today?”

“I’m just trying to relax.”

That’s all I could think of. I was treating myself to a fancy massage and facial for my 40th.

She brought me to the room in the back, I stripped down, climbed onto the massage table (slash bed thingy) that was covered in a beige blanket (while my boobs dangled and swayed back and forth until I got them into position) — it felt like I was lying on a cloud (or at least what I imagine a cloud would feel like).

I put my head down and wondered if I’d be able to breathe with the way the white cotton cloth was wrapped around the headrest. But once the massage started, that thought quickly escaped me. Then I started wondering if she could feel the prickly hairs on my legs during the massage or if I was going to walk out of there looking like Samantha from Sex and the City after her chemical peel from the infrared mask that she placed over my head before leaving the room (and me alone with my thoughts) for 15 minutes!

The bright light made me sneeze, but I held it in as best as I could out of fear that if I let my body convulse in the way it usually does when I sneeze, my face would hit the infrared mask and get burned, or worse, melt off.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m sharing the details of my second facial, ever. I figured now that I’m 40, I’d better get to it. I’m not into all the “anti-aging” hoohaa… I mean, come on, I’d rather age than the alternative. I say this now, of course, when my face has only developed a few lines, specifically the beginning of 11 lines, but I think I’d rather embrace aging as it shows that I’m a living, evolving thing.

Anyhoo, at the end of the treatment, which is called the O-experience (ou la la), she sat me down at the front of the salon and told me I have dry skin. Suddenly, I understood why she had applied so many layers of whatever oil or cream she was using during the facial massage and then proceeded to dip her hands in water to help them glide across my face. She suggested a liposome ceramide serum. A what? What is a liposome? What is ceramide? I thought. She presented a tiny bottle, I’m guessing around 30ml at most, but I was too distracted by the price tag, which said €82.50. I politely declined, but as soon as I walked outside to cycle home, I jotted down “liposome” and “ceramide” in my Notes app, in a new entry called “SKIN”. Genius, I know.

Then I remembered that I have a 250ml bottle of all-natural jojoba oil that I bought for €19.00 when I started experimenting with a Gua Sha stone, and guess what! It’s a natural ceramide. Along with sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, and hemp oil, according to this.

Sara explained that serums and oils should be applied under your moisturizer as they need to sink into your skin, and then the moisturizer seals everything in… who knew!

So I’ve gone from a basic skincare bitch to a 2-step skincare bitch.

Step 1: Cover my face in jojoba oil, including a light massage (only upward, of course!).

Step 2: Seal it all in with my usual CeraVe moisturizer.

Does my face look snatched? (Is that even the right way to say that? My old ass doesn’t know anymore.)

Thanks for reading,

Alexis

P.S. Sara and the massage and the facial were all great! I’m just cheap.