Liberation from the beauty-industrial complex (sorta)

I don’t know whether it was because of Retin-A or good old-fashioned aging, but my skin became incredibly oily about five years ago. I tried just about everything within a grad student budget to fight it: cleansers, moisturizers, astringents, face masks…

The most effective thing was a simple tube of green clay that I bought at Monoprix in France while studying abroad. (I rationed it carefully, but ran out. I’ve never found another face mask as good as that simple €2 tube of clay.) So I was stuck, until I gave up and tried the Oil Cleansing Method. Along with switching to powder foundation, it saved my skin from perpetual ickiness.

OCM is based on the idea that certain kinds of oils, applied to a dirty face full of dirt, dead skin, and skin oils, will yank the dirt out of your pores without stripping out the oils that are supposed to be there. At first glance, it sounds like a bunch of homeopathic nonsense, but it works. And indeed, there are a lot of oil-based skin cleansers out there. You can find them at Sephora. They just cost a whole lot more than a few bottles of oil do. That’s the beauty of it.

I currently use a mixture of 75% castor oil to 25% grapeseed oil, and I have brought my cleanses down to once or twice a week. I try to do it more often in the summer, since my pores don’t understand hot weather. I used the advice on this page, and there are other places online where people can discuss their blends and other fine points, but there’s not much more to it than that.

So, yes, Consumerist readers. I do make my own facial cleanser at home.