30 Days With Rodan + Fields Soothe Skin Care Regimen, Part 1
(Lotion - Greenskeepers)
If you're sitting there thinking, "Steve, why the heck are you reviewing a skin care product?" it means you probably haven't seen this yet. Give that a look-see and then come back here.
All caught up? Good.
The short version is, yes, the mini-facial that I tried several nights ago absolutely did blow my mind a little, so I submitted to my sister's request to try one of her skin care regimens for 30 days, on the condition that I was allowed to review in the same reverent, adult, professional fashion that I review all of my products.
Yeah.
The product in question is Rodan + Fields 'Sooth' Skin Care Regimen, a mixture of four different products -- don't you dare call them lotions! -- that accomplish different feats of awesomeness with your face. As with all products of this type, you can't give give it a one-shot and render judgement. You have to give the product time to work. How much time? About 30 days.
What's in the regimen? Glad you asked. Check this out!
What follows is a log that details my experiences over the course of that time. Any notable thing that happens, I'll scribble it down in this entry, and you'll get to see how this stuff worked for me on an ongoing basis. You'll also get one of those 'Before And After' picture-sets, but I'm going to be doing mine a little bit differently than most people do. See, most of the time, those B&A pictures are kind of a crock of shit. They may very well have been using the product as directed, but the lighting in their before picture is almost always horrible, and they're almost never smiling. I'll be smiling in all of my pictures, and I'm going to take them in the exact same place at roughly the same time under the same lighting. That way, the only wizardry that you get is the sheer magic of my august presence. The regimen calls for twice-daily applications of three products. A fourth product in the form of sunscreen was applied in the morning. In order to keep daylight from interfering with the light quality in my pictures, I'll be grabbing my snappies at night, when Mr. Sun cannot interfere with my sinister agenda.
Let the games begin.
First, the pre-game photo:
Morning 1, January 27th, 2019: In spite of the fact that my sister went over using this regimen with me, I'm still sitting here in the bathroom, squinting at the directions on each bottle to be sure i don't fuck it up and accidentally turn my face into something that even more closely resembles a baboon's ass. Let me be clear here, this isn't because this system is complicated to use, I'm just a moron.
Step 1: Apply and rinse.
Step 2: Apply and leave it on.
Step 3: Apply and leave it on.
Step 4: Apply and...wait for it....leave it on.
I'm so fucking doomed.
(Time Passes....)
Okay, a few observations here:
- My sister was kind enough to start me out on a regiment that has no scent, which is nice. Some of the lotions do have a slight oil/chemical scent to them when they're right there on warm skin, but it goes away really fast. I was worried about smelling like a mannequin, and I shouldn't have been. And if you're wondering how the hell I know what mannequins smell like, don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, Clarice.
- Almost every commercial for facial cleaner you ever see on TV shows someone washing the stuff off after they put it on. Because I'm an idiot and believe everything I read on TV, I was a little surprised to see that you leave three of the four lotions -- excuse me, they're not lotions... -- on my face to actually soak in. Could it be that the stuff I've been watching on TV isn't entirely truthful? I'm not prepared to have my preconceptions challenged like this, especially by a bottle of beauty product...which is definitely not lotion.
- I was really worried that leaving three different types of lotion on my face would -- STILL not lotions -- leave my skin feeling really oily and clogged. I am legitimately stunned about how clean my face feels less than 10 minutes after the whole ordeal was done. You can't see this -- which is good, because it's super awkward to behold -- but I'm sitting here between sentences just petting my own face. I don't feel oily or gross, my skin just feels soft and clean. I was honestly not expecting how pleasant this would feel, and this is on the first bloody day of this regimen.
- Hours later, I'm finding myself randomly petting my own face again just to see if my skin still feels the same as it did this morning. Shockingly, it does.
Evening, Day 1: The problem with suddenly putting a bunch of moisturizer on your skin is that when it's not there, I suddenly and keenly notice its absence. Now that I've started having an inking of an idea about what healthier skin is supposed to feel like, it's much easier to notice when it's dry as hell. Such was the case after this evening's shower. I typically revel in the fact that my face and forehead don't feel gross and oily, but it sort of...hadn't occurred to me that I was swapping gross and oily for dry. After I was sure that all of the water had dried from my skin, I nearly ran into the bathroom to slather myself with the various bottles of ooze that my sister had left for me. Shocker, my skin actually feels better now.
This is how it starts, people.
Morning, Day 2, January 28th, 2019: Why can't I stop petting my damn face?! Additional observations: Having shaved my head the day after I shaved my face, I have an excellent opportunity to track the status of the skin on my head vs. the skin on my face. I'm not using the regimen on my head, so there'll be a great comparison to be made there. Hopefully.
Evening, Day 3, January 30th, 2019: I'm a very tactile person. I have a very acute sense of touch, so textures are explosive for me. I spend a lot of time touching things just to feel them. I see a lot of things through my fingertips. This has made the journey with the Soothe regimen really interesting for me. Whenever it's time to apply the various parts of the regimen, I always make a point of touching my face beforehand so that I can compare and contrast the way the regimen is affecting my skin. I also compare those sensations to the feel of the skin on my head.
Here we are, three days into things, and I can honestly feel my skin changing...and I cannot believe that I'm actually typing this sentence. While using the first step -- the cleaner -- of the regimen this evening, when it was done and I'd rinsed my face off, I legitimately had the thought, 'Oh, that's so much better...' Then I put steps two and three on my face, waited for it to dry, and gave my face its usual round of petting.
God, that sounds so awkward...
If you would have cornered me and asked me how my skin felt after the regimen over the first two days, I would have said that it didn't feel dirty or dry, but it did almost feel...rubbery. Almost synthetic. There was something just a tiny bit...tacky about it. Now, on the evening of the third day, it just feels soft and... normal. Not moist, not dry, just soft and normal, and ... actually, that's not right. It doesn't feel normal. It feels -new-. This is going to sound cliche as hell, but it feels younger.
And if you're my little sister right now, you're hopping up and down shouting, "THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU, DUMB-ASS!"
It feels .... good.
Morning, Day 4, January 31st, 2019: Well, if you're going to put this stuff on your face 30 minutes before bed, be prepared to clean your CPAP mask more. You don't notice how much of this stuff is getting onto your mask until you put it on in the evenings and get a nose-full of the smell of the Stage Two lotion.
Morning, Day 5, February 1st, 2019: A few observations today:
- After paying a little more attention, I think the sunscreen -- Stage 4 of the regimen -- is what's making my skin feel a little off. That's understandable, since it's not designed to soak into your skin as much as it's designed to sit on top of it. I like the way my skin feels better without the sunscreen on. What I'm really interested in now is, does the R+F sunscreen produce a better texture on my skin than another might? I'm going to guess that the answer is 'yes', simply because the R+F stuff seems to soak into the skin better. Typical sunscreen needs to be rubbed in a LOT, and you feel like a greased weasel after you've put it on for a long time. The R+F sunscreen dries on your skin within 30-45 seconds or so. You know it's there -- to be a HUGE nerd, it feels like the friction coefficient of my skin has been increased with it on -- but it's not unpleasant. Oh, the price of beauty. ;)
- I shaved my face and head today, took a shower, and then immediately went and "put my face on." Post-shave, even with the sunscreen on, my skin feels about a MILLION times better than it usually does. Also, if I had to swear on something, I'd say my face was far less red after the shaving than it typically is. Alas, I didn't think to take a before and after picture, so I have nothing to compare it to. Oh well.
Evening, Day 6, February 2nd, 2019: There's this cute little warning on each of the Soothe regimen bottles that says 'Keep away from eyes'. That's good to know, but I feel it's a little misleading. That's like saying you shouldn't really get this in your eyes. What it should say is something like, "This bottle of skin-care solution lives only to devour the tender eye-meat inside of your skull, and will do so without a moment's hesitation should you give it the opportunity. It will do this slowly, painfully, all while horribly down-tuned metal plays in the background, accompanied by the chorus of every demon in hell." That might have made me appreciate the side-effects of accidentally getting a tiny smidgeon of this shit in my left eye and then promptly putting on a master-class in the production of colorful metaphors.
Morning, Day 8, February 4th, 2019: If I was going to take a punt on the assumed target for this regimen, I would say that R+F was thinking of women first. Now, I realize this statement is going to garner a 'No shit, Steve', reaction from some folks, but hear me out:
This stuff wasn't designed with facial hair in mind.
My sister was very specific about how you really didn't need to use much to cover your face, but if you haven't shaved in a few days, the hair on your face just soaks it all up, and suddenly you don't feel like you have enough of it on your actual skin. This isn't a huge problem, you just put a little more on your fingers each time, but that little bit adds up. If I last the whole 30 days with this stuff, I'll be SUPER impressed, but I'm gonna say it here and now, that's not happening. Not with my beard eating half of it.
Morning, Day 11, February 7th, 2019: Well, my hands are really soft now. That wouldn't be a problem, except that I'm trying to play guitar, and all of this lotion -- still not lotion! -- is sort of...ruining my calloused fingertips.
The sacrifices we make for beauty, wot?
Morning, Day 12, February 8th, 2019: Dirty little secret time! I've been conducting two product reviews at the same time and I haven't been telling anyone about it. In addition to the Soothe regimen, I've also been playing around with a moisturizing cream -- still not a lotion -- for my head. I shave my head, which will surprise no one who knows me or has seen my videos on YouTube. Shaving any part of your body is actually really hard on it, so I've been trying to take better care of my scalp while I also take better care of my face. The moisturizing cream works amazingly well, and I'll talk about it in another post, I promise! What's cool, and stick with me here because I'm getting to that, is the observation I was able to make this morning after shaving both my face and my head at the same time. Right after I'm done shaving, after I've rinsed all of the residual shaving cream off of my face and head, my skin customarily feels very smooth, but also rather dry. Here's the cool bit:
There's a very noticeable difference between how my face felt and how my scalp felt. My face didn't feel nearly as stripped and dry as my scalp did. Now, after I promptly put a dollop of moisturizer on my head and worked it in, my head went back to feeling amazing, and then I promptly waddled into my other bathroom and put my face on, which made it feel amazing too. The awesome take-away here is the fact that the Sooth regimen is improving my skin in a noticeable capacity, even after I've shaved it. If you know anything about biology or dermatology, that's...well, it's really cool, but I've used the word 'cool' now a bunch of times, so I need to think of a better word.
I'll get back to you on that.
Morning, Day 15, February 11th, 2019: Well, here we are, halfway through the regimen. Some thoughts on this auspicious day:
- I'm pretty sure that I don't care for the texture of the Stage 2 cream or the Stage 4 sun screen. They feel really oily on my fingers. I would be more alarmed by this except for this next part...
- I continue to be absolutely stunned by how damn quickly Stages 2, 3, and 4 soak into my skin. I can absolutely tell the difference in texture on my skin in the mornings when I use the sunscreen versus in the evenings when I don't, but if you've ever used sunscreen, you know how awful it leaves your skin feeling. You can't wait to get home and wash the stuff off. The R+F sunscreen is still very much present on your skin, but it doesn't feel gross at all.
- I love the Stage 1 face wash. I love how it smells, I love how it feels on my skin, and I love how my skin feels after I rinse it off. It smells bright, clean, and isn't cloying. I wonder if they sell this stuff on its own or if it's really only designed to be used with the rest of this regimen. Time to call my sister...
I'm holding off my final thoughts until the last day, but so far, this has been a far more pleasant experience than I expected it to me.
Stay tuned for part two of these entries!
If you're sitting there thinking, "Steve, why the heck are you reviewing a skin care product?" it means you probably haven't seen this yet. Give that a look-see and then come back here.
All caught up? Good.
The short version is, yes, the mini-facial that I tried several nights ago absolutely did blow my mind a little, so I submitted to my sister's request to try one of her skin care regimens for 30 days, on the condition that I was allowed to review in the same reverent, adult, professional fashion that I review all of my products.
Yeah.
The product in question is Rodan + Fields 'Sooth' Skin Care Regimen, a mixture of four different products -- don't you dare call them lotions! -- that accomplish different feats of awesomeness with your face. As with all products of this type, you can't give give it a one-shot and render judgement. You have to give the product time to work. How much time? About 30 days.
What's in the regimen? Glad you asked. Check this out!
What follows is a log that details my experiences over the course of that time. Any notable thing that happens, I'll scribble it down in this entry, and you'll get to see how this stuff worked for me on an ongoing basis. You'll also get one of those 'Before And After' picture-sets, but I'm going to be doing mine a little bit differently than most people do. See, most of the time, those B&A pictures are kind of a crock of shit. They may very well have been using the product as directed, but the lighting in their before picture is almost always horrible, and they're almost never smiling. I'll be smiling in all of my pictures, and I'm going to take them in the exact same place at roughly the same time under the same lighting. That way, the only wizardry that you get is the sheer magic of my august presence. The regimen calls for twice-daily applications of three products. A fourth product in the form of sunscreen was applied in the morning. In order to keep daylight from interfering with the light quality in my pictures, I'll be grabbing my snappies at night, when Mr. Sun cannot interfere with my sinister agenda.
Let the games begin.
First, the pre-game photo:
Morning 1, January 27th, 2019: In spite of the fact that my sister went over using this regimen with me, I'm still sitting here in the bathroom, squinting at the directions on each bottle to be sure i don't fuck it up and accidentally turn my face into something that even more closely resembles a baboon's ass. Let me be clear here, this isn't because this system is complicated to use, I'm just a moron.
Step 1: Apply and rinse.
Step 2: Apply and leave it on.
Step 3: Apply and leave it on.
Step 4: Apply and...wait for it....leave it on.
I'm so fucking doomed.
(Time Passes....)
Okay, a few observations here:
- My sister was kind enough to start me out on a regiment that has no scent, which is nice. Some of the lotions do have a slight oil/chemical scent to them when they're right there on warm skin, but it goes away really fast. I was worried about smelling like a mannequin, and I shouldn't have been. And if you're wondering how the hell I know what mannequins smell like, don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, Clarice.
- Almost every commercial for facial cleaner you ever see on TV shows someone washing the stuff off after they put it on. Because I'm an idiot and believe everything I read on TV, I was a little surprised to see that you leave three of the four lotions -- excuse me, they're not lotions... -- on my face to actually soak in. Could it be that the stuff I've been watching on TV isn't entirely truthful? I'm not prepared to have my preconceptions challenged like this, especially by a bottle of beauty product...which is definitely not lotion.
- I was really worried that leaving three different types of lotion on my face would -- STILL not lotions -- leave my skin feeling really oily and clogged. I am legitimately stunned about how clean my face feels less than 10 minutes after the whole ordeal was done. You can't see this -- which is good, because it's super awkward to behold -- but I'm sitting here between sentences just petting my own face. I don't feel oily or gross, my skin just feels soft and clean. I was honestly not expecting how pleasant this would feel, and this is on the first bloody day of this regimen.
- Hours later, I'm finding myself randomly petting my own face again just to see if my skin still feels the same as it did this morning. Shockingly, it does.
Evening, Day 1: The problem with suddenly putting a bunch of moisturizer on your skin is that when it's not there, I suddenly and keenly notice its absence. Now that I've started having an inking of an idea about what healthier skin is supposed to feel like, it's much easier to notice when it's dry as hell. Such was the case after this evening's shower. I typically revel in the fact that my face and forehead don't feel gross and oily, but it sort of...hadn't occurred to me that I was swapping gross and oily for dry. After I was sure that all of the water had dried from my skin, I nearly ran into the bathroom to slather myself with the various bottles of ooze that my sister had left for me. Shocker, my skin actually feels better now.
This is how it starts, people.
Morning, Day 2, January 28th, 2019: Why can't I stop petting my damn face?! Additional observations: Having shaved my head the day after I shaved my face, I have an excellent opportunity to track the status of the skin on my head vs. the skin on my face. I'm not using the regimen on my head, so there'll be a great comparison to be made there. Hopefully.
Evening, Day 3, January 30th, 2019: I'm a very tactile person. I have a very acute sense of touch, so textures are explosive for me. I spend a lot of time touching things just to feel them. I see a lot of things through my fingertips. This has made the journey with the Soothe regimen really interesting for me. Whenever it's time to apply the various parts of the regimen, I always make a point of touching my face beforehand so that I can compare and contrast the way the regimen is affecting my skin. I also compare those sensations to the feel of the skin on my head.
Here we are, three days into things, and I can honestly feel my skin changing...and I cannot believe that I'm actually typing this sentence. While using the first step -- the cleaner -- of the regimen this evening, when it was done and I'd rinsed my face off, I legitimately had the thought, 'Oh, that's so much better...' Then I put steps two and three on my face, waited for it to dry, and gave my face its usual round of petting.
God, that sounds so awkward...
If you would have cornered me and asked me how my skin felt after the regimen over the first two days, I would have said that it didn't feel dirty or dry, but it did almost feel...rubbery. Almost synthetic. There was something just a tiny bit...tacky about it. Now, on the evening of the third day, it just feels soft and... normal. Not moist, not dry, just soft and normal, and ... actually, that's not right. It doesn't feel normal. It feels -new-. This is going to sound cliche as hell, but it feels younger.
And if you're my little sister right now, you're hopping up and down shouting, "THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU, DUMB-ASS!"
It feels .... good.
Morning, Day 4, January 31st, 2019: Well, if you're going to put this stuff on your face 30 minutes before bed, be prepared to clean your CPAP mask more. You don't notice how much of this stuff is getting onto your mask until you put it on in the evenings and get a nose-full of the smell of the Stage Two lotion.
Morning, Day 5, February 1st, 2019: A few observations today:
- After paying a little more attention, I think the sunscreen -- Stage 4 of the regimen -- is what's making my skin feel a little off. That's understandable, since it's not designed to soak into your skin as much as it's designed to sit on top of it. I like the way my skin feels better without the sunscreen on. What I'm really interested in now is, does the R+F sunscreen produce a better texture on my skin than another might? I'm going to guess that the answer is 'yes', simply because the R+F stuff seems to soak into the skin better. Typical sunscreen needs to be rubbed in a LOT, and you feel like a greased weasel after you've put it on for a long time. The R+F sunscreen dries on your skin within 30-45 seconds or so. You know it's there -- to be a HUGE nerd, it feels like the friction coefficient of my skin has been increased with it on -- but it's not unpleasant. Oh, the price of beauty. ;)
- I shaved my face and head today, took a shower, and then immediately went and "put my face on." Post-shave, even with the sunscreen on, my skin feels about a MILLION times better than it usually does. Also, if I had to swear on something, I'd say my face was far less red after the shaving than it typically is. Alas, I didn't think to take a before and after picture, so I have nothing to compare it to. Oh well.
Evening, Day 6, February 2nd, 2019: There's this cute little warning on each of the Soothe regimen bottles that says 'Keep away from eyes'. That's good to know, but I feel it's a little misleading. That's like saying you shouldn't really get this in your eyes. What it should say is something like, "This bottle of skin-care solution lives only to devour the tender eye-meat inside of your skull, and will do so without a moment's hesitation should you give it the opportunity. It will do this slowly, painfully, all while horribly down-tuned metal plays in the background, accompanied by the chorus of every demon in hell." That might have made me appreciate the side-effects of accidentally getting a tiny smidgeon of this shit in my left eye and then promptly putting on a master-class in the production of colorful metaphors.
Morning, Day 8, February 4th, 2019: If I was going to take a punt on the assumed target for this regimen, I would say that R+F was thinking of women first. Now, I realize this statement is going to garner a 'No shit, Steve', reaction from some folks, but hear me out:
This stuff wasn't designed with facial hair in mind.
My sister was very specific about how you really didn't need to use much to cover your face, but if you haven't shaved in a few days, the hair on your face just soaks it all up, and suddenly you don't feel like you have enough of it on your actual skin. This isn't a huge problem, you just put a little more on your fingers each time, but that little bit adds up. If I last the whole 30 days with this stuff, I'll be SUPER impressed, but I'm gonna say it here and now, that's not happening. Not with my beard eating half of it.
Morning, Day 11, February 7th, 2019: Well, my hands are really soft now. That wouldn't be a problem, except that I'm trying to play guitar, and all of this lotion -- still not lotion! -- is sort of...ruining my calloused fingertips.
The sacrifices we make for beauty, wot?
Morning, Day 12, February 8th, 2019: Dirty little secret time! I've been conducting two product reviews at the same time and I haven't been telling anyone about it. In addition to the Soothe regimen, I've also been playing around with a moisturizing cream -- still not a lotion -- for my head. I shave my head, which will surprise no one who knows me or has seen my videos on YouTube. Shaving any part of your body is actually really hard on it, so I've been trying to take better care of my scalp while I also take better care of my face. The moisturizing cream works amazingly well, and I'll talk about it in another post, I promise! What's cool, and stick with me here because I'm getting to that, is the observation I was able to make this morning after shaving both my face and my head at the same time. Right after I'm done shaving, after I've rinsed all of the residual shaving cream off of my face and head, my skin customarily feels very smooth, but also rather dry. Here's the cool bit:
There's a very noticeable difference between how my face felt and how my scalp felt. My face didn't feel nearly as stripped and dry as my scalp did. Now, after I promptly put a dollop of moisturizer on my head and worked it in, my head went back to feeling amazing, and then I promptly waddled into my other bathroom and put my face on, which made it feel amazing too. The awesome take-away here is the fact that the Sooth regimen is improving my skin in a noticeable capacity, even after I've shaved it. If you know anything about biology or dermatology, that's...well, it's really cool, but I've used the word 'cool' now a bunch of times, so I need to think of a better word.
I'll get back to you on that.
Morning, Day 15, February 11th, 2019: Well, here we are, halfway through the regimen. Some thoughts on this auspicious day:
- I'm pretty sure that I don't care for the texture of the Stage 2 cream or the Stage 4 sun screen. They feel really oily on my fingers. I would be more alarmed by this except for this next part...
- I continue to be absolutely stunned by how damn quickly Stages 2, 3, and 4 soak into my skin. I can absolutely tell the difference in texture on my skin in the mornings when I use the sunscreen versus in the evenings when I don't, but if you've ever used sunscreen, you know how awful it leaves your skin feeling. You can't wait to get home and wash the stuff off. The R+F sunscreen is still very much present on your skin, but it doesn't feel gross at all.
- I love the Stage 1 face wash. I love how it smells, I love how it feels on my skin, and I love how my skin feels after I rinse it off. It smells bright, clean, and isn't cloying. I wonder if they sell this stuff on its own or if it's really only designed to be used with the rest of this regimen. Time to call my sister...
I'm holding off my final thoughts until the last day, but so far, this has been a far more pleasant experience than I expected it to me.
Stay tuned for part two of these entries!
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