How to Save Your Hide

Veteran beauty editor Val Monroe shares five basic things you should know about your skin. Plus, an Open Thread where you can share you skin-saving secrets...

May 09, 2025

UPDATE: Valerie Monroe and I are going to talk more about her skincare advice on my Substack Live show, on Tuesday, 5/13 at 3pm ET. Join us! Thanks to everyone who’s commented! So many great responses. Here’s a link: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/27852

Readers,

Today we have some basic skincare advice from How Not to F*ck Up Your Face writer Val Monroe.

Val is a veteran beauty writer and editor whose newsletter I subscribe to and read the minute it arrives in my inbox. She provides measured, researched beauty advice, often enlisting medical experts to weigh in. Bolstering my trust in everything she writes, Val maintains a healthy skepticism of the beauty industry, overpriced serums, and practitioners and products that overstate (or flat out fabricate) their claims to having formulated veritable fountains of youth. Her piece is down below this section. ⬇️

I thought this would be a good subject to have everyone weigh in on, too. As we age, so—obviously—does our skin. How our skin changes with time is the most outward sign of aging. We can only control that so much, but there are things we can do to improve the health and appearance of our largest organ. What’s your secret to keeping your skin healthy? In the comments tell us:

How old are you? What’s your skincare routine like? Do you wear sunscreen? What do you wash your face with? Do you use some kind of skincare “system” formulated by a medical professional or beauty brand? What’s worked? What hasn’t? Be specific about products you like. (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you!)

Here’s Val’s piece ⬇️

How to Save Your Hide

Five basic things you should know about your skin.

by Valerie Monroe

1. Do you know what a hide is? You should, because you have one. One square inch contains around 19 million cells, a fine idea, because it sheds about 30,000 cells a minute. It accounts for 10-15% of your body weight, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. And it protects you from many kinds of environmental insults, not to mention—but of course I will because it’s critical to your ability to hold a job, or a golf club, or even an opinion—that it is the brilliant, self-renewing container of all of your organs. In other words, without it, you would be a puddle of gunk. That’s the main reason you need to take care of it. It is your one, precious meat suit.

2. But care for it, how? In spite of its remarkable abilities to repair itself, it will, after many exposures to sunlight and pollution and whatever other damaging adventures you submit it to—aging, for example—begin to degrade. The best you can do is to slow the degradation by treating it well. By which I mean reducing damaging exposure to UVA/UVB rays by using a broad spectrum sunscreen every day, rain or shine: That is the most effective way to preserve the integrity of your youthful complexion. After that, a gentle, non-soap cleanser, and, if you can tolerate it, a retinoid (vitamin A) product, which has been proven—scientifically proven—to help generate collagen and elastin. They are the CEO’s of the Firm. Why? Because they’re what keeps your face from looking like a pillow with most of the stuffing pulled out.

3. As much as certain large companies and influencers would love you to believe it, your skin is not a diva that needs complicated and expensive maintenance. It needs only protection (sunscreen) and, if you’re not the succulent type, moisture, and, for those who are determined to try to preserve youthfulness, a treatment product like the aforementioned retinoid. Not that your skin won’t appreciate an occasional visit to the dermatologist for a special treat, like a toning laser or any of the other devices purported to improve the quality of your complexion. And a yearly skin cancer check is mandatory. But it’s important to remember that…

4. There are no miracles. There is as yet no Fountain of Youth. There is a Fountain of Different, which is how most people look when they’ve been trying too hard to recover years lost to, well, living. Which brings me to…

5. Living. You are organic, which means, and I’m sorry to remind you, that no matter what you do, eventually you will go away. You can treat your skin like you would treat the Queen of England and still, like the Queen of England, it, along with all it contains, will relinquish its reign. So: Be Here Now. That’s a gift your skin has given you. It’s a miracle, really.

Valerie Monroe spent nearly 16 years as the beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine and has been an editor at Ms., Redbook, Self, and Parenting magazines, among others, a contributing writer at Parents, Entertainment Weekly, The Cut at New York Magazine, and has written hundreds of articles for many national publications; she’s now a contributor at Allure Magazine. Subscribe to her weekly Substack newsletter, How Not to F*ck Up Your Face.

In December, 2021, Val Monroe took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.

Okay, your turn:

How old are you? What’s your skincare routine like? Do you wear sunscreen? What do you wash your face with? Do you use some kind of skincare “system” formulated by a medical professional, or beauty brand? What’s worked? What hasn’t? Be specific about products you like. (If you’re commenting, please also do me the favor of hitting the heart button ❤️ for algorithmic purposes. Thank you!)

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