Making faces

"I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep," author and playwright Jean Kerr once wrote. "That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas?" Trite but true.

In the search for the next big beauty blowout – the miracle face lifters and hi-tech wrinkle erasers – consumers tend to overlook the most important part of a beauty regimen: moisturizer. It’s as though fall’s biggest trend yet –layering – has transposed itself into the beauty biz with over-hyped labels hawking the latest foundations, concealers and illuminating creams to cover up. Granted, they have their uses –concealers, in particular, are a zit-zapper’s best friend. But as with fashion, if your basics aren’t in order, the look just ain’t right.

Like most people, I was always one bad breakout away from the elephant man. My skin was always straddling grease-pan oily and Sahara dry. Talk about the ultimate T-zone: a one-inch jump between zones and it was like the greenhouse effect – total climate change. It wasn’t until I got a gig writing about beauty products that I began to learn there was more to cleaning skin than just rubbing generic soap over it in the shower. (Somewhere right now, my facialist is weeping into her toning swabs.) In between interviews with renowned makeup artists and research into product development lines, I gleaned a few things from these experts. Lesson one: Home remedies hardly ever work. Leave skin revitalizing potions to the experts. The only thing a homemade mashed banana and honey facial is going to give you is an ant problem.

Lesson two: Moisturize! That lesson only hit me when, during a beauty junket in Shanghai, a beautician scanned my face with this hi-tech facial scanner and the computer spit out the most heinous results anyone could hear: I had the skin of a 30-year-old woman. And I was only 23! Before I could buy a spiked baseball bat (so I could give the computer a sound, and much-deserved, thrashing) it hit me that there were more positive ways to respond to such a slight. Soon after I was packing tubs of moisturizers into my bags and bathing in it for hours on end till my face was smoother than that of the baby Jesus. Unfortunately, I won’t be competing for the next beauty ad anytime soon – my skin is nowhere near dazzlingly perfect – but there’s been some major improvement. I spend less time spackling on concealer in the morning because my blemishes (gifts from a high school bout with the chicken pox mixed with my annoying tendencies to pick zits at obscene hours of the night) have faded so my face no longer resembles a war zone.

Granted, there’s more to it than a simple tub of cream. There is no miracle potion that will answer all of your beauty problems. A better skin regimen that includes constant cleaning, toning and moisturizing, regular application of sunblock, enough sleep, and (dare I say it) a better diet all contribute to a better complexion. Judging from the condition of my skin, a lot of the credit goes to moisturizing. Without it, I’d still be dealing with oil spills the likes Guimaras never heard of.

But there’s more to moisturizer than just hydrating skin and evening out complexions. It also reduces lines and wrinkles, transforms dull grayish skin tone to something of a healthier shade, diminishes blemishes and age spots and smoothens skin. At least Olay Total Effects does.

Launched only last week, the Olay line has been dubbed by the New York Times as the top in the skin biz. Now available at department stores and drugstores everywhere, the top-rated moisturizer boasts an awards pedigree most pageant queens would die to grab: Vogue named it the essential moisturizer in 2005 and Marie Claire included it in its annual beauty awards roster.

Its VitaNiacin formula is a combination of vitamin E, great for conditioning skin, Pro-vitamin B5, which keeps skin moisturized and supple, and Niacinamide (vitamin B3), perfect for encouraging skin renewal. Based on the feedback from the skincare brand’s five ambassadors (which includes the lovely and always poised Daphne Osena), the moisturizer is a goddess-maker.

But don’t take their word for it. If there’s one thing everyone needs it’s some kind of skin-pampering potion that helps delay the signs of aging. Because every day you skip on moisturizer, you come closer to being told by some unfeeling computer program that you have the skin of a woman seven years your senior.

It’s like the saying goes: Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.

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E-mail me at oohbea@gmail.com for comments or suggestions.