Aaron Ellis

Spend a few minutes on Instagram and you'll find someone with a skincare shelf that could stock a small boutique, a twelve-step routine, and a very specific order in which everything has to be applied. It looks impressive. It also looks exhausting. And somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder: is that what I should be doing? It isn't. A lot of that content is entertainment, which is fine — but it's also advertising, whether that's explicit or not. The complexity serves the content, not...

I know that goes against most of what you've heard. Stay with me for a minute. There's a belief that's been baked into beauty culture for a long time — that more coverage means more confidence, that the right foundation will fix whatever you're worried about, and that if something isn't working you probably just need to add something else. When you're in your 50s or 60s and the concerns feel bigger, the instinct is often to reach for more product, not less. What I see in practice, though, is...

Hydrated skin looks plumper and more alive. But moisturizer works on the surface, and wrinkles don't start there.