What's Up With Salmon Skin?

plus, facial hair spray

Welcome readers, old and new!

Please hit the ❤️ above to remind yourself and fellow HNTFUYF-ers to keep drinking water, especially in the heat.

A week after returning from a 14-day jaunt to Tokyo, I’m still spinning. I don’t often write about Japan + beauty news but my skin seemed especially smooth on my most recent trip. Wouldn’t it be funny if we learned jet lag enhanced your complexion? When I land back in the U.S., it’s always around five minutes earlier on the same day I left Japan. By my (admittedly loose) calculations, I should be almost an hour younger today than I would’ve been if I hadn’t been traveling. Might I be accruing a more youthful complexion as a result of those saved minutes?

In my dreams.

Actually, if there is a difference in my skin, I wonder if it’s partly due to diet. I’ve been eating salmon (baked, broiled, raw, you name it) three or four times a week. Salmon contains omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants (including astaxanthin), vitamin A, and protein, all of which are good for your skin. (Also, I’ve been eating less sugar by avoiding something sweet after dinner.) Anybody want to up their salmon intake for several months to see if there’s an effect on your complexion?

A salmon facial for this Grizzly.

A reader recently wrote she was tired of reading about my granddaughter; she just wanted to know how not to eff up her face. I would’ve written back, but she unsubscribed, so I figured she’d had enough of me. But the stories here about M are not unrelated to the subject matter.

I believe one of the ways we avoid f*cking up our face is by engaging in supportive activities and relationships—especially as we age, when support in general might be declining. And I hope my M anecdotes heighten your mood. Research has shown a positive mood can directly modulate our vision, literally widening the scope of our visual field, which then enhances our awareness by broadening our perspective. The exercise I keep nudging you to try? It helps you see your face less as a discrete object and more as a reflection of who you are: a (grand)child lover, or a puppy lover, or a friend lover (lover, obviously, being the leveling factor). Want to really f*ck up your face? Get yourself into a terrible mood by scanning it for flaws. But really, don’t!

🪒 🪒 🪒

I’ve written previously about facial hair and how to deal with it, but there’s a new trend a reader recently asked about… and it’s a doozy.

The beauty Q&A in this post is available only to paid subscribers. For full access to all posts and the extensive archives—and if I’ve saved you a nice piece of change or maybe even a piece of your soul—please become a paid subscriber at the current rate of $40/year. If you can’t afford a subscription, email me at valeriemonroe@substack.com and I’ll comp you one, no questions asked. 🙏🏻