Dear Weeekly,
I saw Martha Stewart talking about her terrifyingly complex skin care routine in the New York Times, and now I’m kinda freaking out. How am I ever gonna be as radiantly and ethereally beautiful as Martha Stewart when I’m 72? I only have 50 years to get on her level. Do I need to start wearing toning masks and using serums every day now? Because seriously, dayum.
—Scared of Wrinkles
Dear SOW,
To help you out, here’s The Weekly’s four easy steps to glowing, firm-but-not-tight, smooth-but-not-like-a-literal-baby, Martha Stewart-tier skin. It’s up to you how seriously and rigorously you want to follow these rules, but let’s just say a certain number of the editorial board here takes their skin care very seriously, and you can tell.
1. Remember your liquids: milk, honey, blood, and brine. It’s important to keep your humours in the right balance when you’re trying to achieve that otherworldy glow. If you find yourself surrounded by chaos, stress, and unconscionably large amounts of bloodloss (as we all often are), you should try to balance that out with a good, whole-body goat milk soak. Crying yourself to sleep every night? It’ll draw your skin tight and lead to crow’s feet, so soothe the tension beneath your eyes with a dab or two of honey.
2. Try to use the purest products possible, whenever possible. Everybody knows that brine concentrated from the tears of recent divorcees just isn’t quite the same when they’ve been drinking too much scotch. Only ravens hand-fed with the corpses of your enemies are going to provide you with the feathers you need to brush the dust from those little nooks and crannies in your body without leaving any undesirable residues behind too. Of course, it’s possible to cut corners and still get results, but you won’t be the best possible you, unless you use the best possible components.
3. Routine is key: you can’t just apply a goat’s blood mask once every two weeks and expect to get amazing results. You have to commit, whatever the application is. Milk from a cow who gave birth on a night of a new moon is great, but only if you use it four times per lunar cycle, like the instructions on the stone tablets say. Honestly, it’s inconvenient but not hard to read the runes yourself, or find an online translation – it’s just a matter of making yourself stick to it.
4. Maintain a good diet. Good skin is not something that just magically happens when you slather your skin with a paste of mud and puréed shed snake skins, though obviously that helps. You have to change your intake as well. Consuming a decent amount of chitin is an often overlooked way to improve the skin’s firmness. Try eating whole raw shrimp to start, and if you’re feeling adventurous, there are a myriad of insects available for your consumption. You’d be amazed at how far a couple centipedes go!
Obviously, there are benefits to following these guidelines other than the breathtaking complexion you’ll have. Balancing your humours will help with digestion, energy levels, and improve the strength of your pheromonal excretions, to list a few. Hopefully these tips set you on the right path though – good luck!
—The Weekly