Blog

Jul 11, 2023

I Did A Skin

By Emma Specter It's a funny thing, keeping a skin diary; by the time you actually get around to write it up a day or two later, your (or, at least, my) skin has already returned to its oily, dry,

By Emma Specter

It's a funny thing, keeping a skin diary; by the time you actually get around to write it up a day or two later, your (or, at least, my) skin has already returned to its oily, dry, acne-prone status quo. Am I being too hard on my natural, God-given face here? Possibly, but you have to understand: Once you get used to drinking a Hailey Bieber skin glaze smoothie every day for a week, only to have that life-giving juice cruelly stripped away from you once it's “no longer reimbursable by Condé Nast,” it's mildly difficult to look at yourself in the mirror without thinking “Damn, imagine how much more subtly luminous and hot I would be if I were still quaffing vast quantities of $20 strawberry glaze, collagen and sea moss every day.”

I realize that this cognitive dissonance on my part is a huge part of what the beauty industry hopes to capitalize on in its ideal consumer, and I'm trying really hard not to engage in what Sonya Renee Taylor calls “detriment buying” (i.e. spending money on beauty and/or fashion items I may feel like I need but that bring me zero joy and a ton of hassle, like Spanx or even razors, TBH.) That said, when an opportunity presented itself to spend another stretch of time immersing myself wholesale in a beauty-based routine, I couldn't have said yes faster; first of all, as a Cancer, I thrive in water of any kind, so the idea of ritually plunging myself into the coldest liquid I could find every day for a week appealed to me. (Oh Lord, how young and naive I was a week ago.)

While the Erewhon adventure wasn't exactly something I could replicate on my own (nor would I want to ... that strawberry glaze gets to you, man), I was curious about trying a range of cold-plunge options that had developed out of different cultural and spiritual traditions, from a repeated immersion at my favorite Korean spa in L.A. to an extremely West-Hollywood-girlie infrared sauna/cold plunge “experience” to a good old-fashioned bath at home in tepid water made colder by a couple of bags of ice from the gas station. Below, find all the details of my (mostly) chill week of cold plunges :

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #1:

I'm fresh off a week of skin-glaze smoothies and my skin mostly looks like it, except for a weird red pimple-ish splotch above my upper lip that clearly did not get the “we lack imperfections now, sweety” memo. I've been going to Wi Spa in L.A.'s Koreatown since I was 22 and still deathly afraid of the semi-public nudity that the 24-hour spa's pool area requires, but these days, it's a different vibe: I know I'm going to see all kinds of bodies cold-plunging and hot-tubbing and getting massages all around me, which makes me feel way less stressed about revealing my own. My partner and I headed over after work, disrobing and stashing our stuff as they assured me the cold tub wouldn't be that cold.

There are three communal tubs in the women's spa area—a medium-hot one, a truly hot one, and a cold one—and it's the last of these that I set my sights on, forsaking the coziness of the medium-hot tub I normally spend a full half-hour in to slowly and miserably dip one inch of my body in at a time, shaking, even though I recognize that it's not freezing—it's cold, to be sure, but it would probably feel good if I just gave into it. I refuse! One inch at a time! I finally get my whole body underwater, my teeth chattering like they're about to sprint out of my head as the clique of girls next to me absolutely humiliates me by submerging themselves with nary a shiver.

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

Once I've spent a few freezing minutes in the cold tub, I rush back to the safety of the medium-hot one, already feeling (am I crazy?) like my skin is softer as I subtly brush my cheek.

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #2:

And lo, on the second day of my Wi Spa journey, I break down and spend $30 on beauty items I don't need (but desperately want) at the spa gift shop, including a Dr. Jart face mask and a restock of my beloved Kahi Collagen Mist. This has always been my skin M.O.; I won't take 30 seconds to wipe off my makeup when I'm actively breaking out, but if my face happens to look good on any given day, I will spend an absolutely unsanctioned amount of money on products designed to enhance its glow.

I use the face mask after my cold plunge, which, I have to say, feels even less cold today—good news for my poor ailing body (which is still attempting to work a wedding weekend's worth of debauchery out of its system and is used to being met with the sweet caress of nachos and rom-coms it normally receives in this situation), bad news for my story. I head to Wi Spa's “ice room,” where the temperature hangs around 40 degrees, in an attempt to compensate, but quickly realize that my rapid-fire chatter with my friend Julie—who kindly accompanied me on today's excursion—is making everyone else in the ice room want to lock me inside until I freeze to death, so I hustle out before the chill really has a chance to do its thing. Still, my skin is legit glowing, and my lungs do feel a little more ... clear or something when I breathe deeply. Is that anything?

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #3:

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

I arrive at Wi Spa for the third day in a row, only to learn from a little sign at reception that the cold plunge pool is closed for cleaning. (Sabotage by a rival publication??? Too soon to tell at this juncture.) Undaunted, I get back in my car and Google “Russian banyas LA cold plunge,” only to become extremely daunted by the place that comes up first, Voda Spa, an “updated” banya that's so hip and City of Angels-y that it's...membership-only? I debate calling to explain my situation and see if I can wrangle a press visit, but the thought of trying to explain myself to an uninterested Russian тётя (loosely translated: auntie) and ask for special treatment makes me instantly sweaty, so I forgo it and pick up a bag of ice from the grocery store to dump in my bathtub when I get home.

I don't last very long in my makeshift plunge pool; the swimsuit-clad photos I attempt to take as proof come out as blurry and grainy as security footage, but just trust me that unlike Hailey from Stick It, I do not look cute in an ice bath. I do, however, look cute after; my cheeks are pink, my eyes look brighter, and even the above-the-lip pimple that dominated today's selfie seems to be scared into begrudging submission.

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #4:

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

Okay, I look ... shiny as hell in a good way today, right? I feel like the cartoon-baby-deer version of myself; clear-skinned, glowing, and I swear to God my eyelashes have somehow grown over the past four days. (Fine, maybe I forgot to remove last night's mascara after a night of sweating it out at emo karaoke and recovering with midnight In-n-Out, but whatever.)

I call Wi Spa and learn that the cold-plunge pool is working today, but just today, so I'll need to figure another cold immersion plan out for the weekend. I head back to Koreatown for a last frigid dunk in the women's spa, noticing that it's a lot easier this time around than it was earlier this week; is the cold water truly on the fritz, or am I ... learning endurance? Some very nice women I don't know include me in their chatter about a bachelorette party they're dreading (I guess I just have one of those faces that says, “No, I don't want to go to your bachelorette party”?) and before I know it, I'm climbing out of the cold tub after a full five-minute plunge.

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #5:

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

Okay, folks, strap in, because today is a truly special day I like to refer to as The One Where Emma Tried an Infrared Sauna/Cold Plunge Combo and Ended Up Puking Up Electrolyte-Infused Water Outside Trejo's Coffee and Donuts on Santa Monica (a little wordy, perhaps, but it's true). Let me back up: the good people at LIV Infrared Sauna and Cold Plunge in West Hollywood were kind enough to invite me and my friend Jocelyn to try out their facilities so I could precede my cold plunge with a sauna session.

I said yes, obviously, as I, like Shoshanna Shapiro before me, love products, and I truly can't recommend the experience enough (even though I was obviously a coward who only lasted a second in the cold tub, whereas Jocelyn smoked me by lasting six entire minutes). What I also recommend, though, is not eating too directly beforehand and/or not being “still extremely hungover from karaoke and cheese fries on Wednesday”; I felt fine during the sauna and plunge, if a little queasy from the “rosé all day, next day okay”-branded electrolyte powder I'd accepted and dutifully sprinkled into my water, but half an hour after I left, I found myself making a frantic left in L.A. weekend traffic to (forgive me) hurl my guts out in front of the aforementioned Mr. Trejo's donut shop. My dazed, nauseous post-puke car selfies were kind of fire, though, I'll give myself that.

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #6:

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

We drive to Orange County in the afternoon to have an early dinner with my partner's grandparents, and I decide to use the occasion to wear actual makeup, as well as my brand-new Mara Hoffman shirt from the 80%-off sample sale, and force my beleaguered partner to take a million pictures of me in their driveway. Still, it's the selfie I take in the car that truly stuns me; I've deeply pared down my beauty routine over the past few years, so the combination of brushing on some mascara and seeing how clear the week's cold plunges (or my brand-new array of K-beauty products, or some other unknown force) have made my skin have me marveling at my own beauty, Narcissus-like. Unfortunately, soon after dinner, I discover I have a not-small amount of steak in my teeth, which dims my light somewhat.

My cold plunge for the day is kind of a cop-out, I'll admit; I fit in a cold shower between getting home from dinner and meeting up with our friends at a gay bar in North Hollywood, and honestly, it's unpleasant and I don't think it made my skin any better than a warm shower would have. Nevertheless, we persist in the name of science! I am the J. Robert Oppenheimer of skincare!

Reference photo of skin before Cold Plunge #7:

By Alexandra Macon

By Kui Mwai

By Christian Allaire

And just like that, the experiment of the week ends with me hurtling my Ganni-swimsuit-I-paid-too-much-money-for-clad body into the Pacific Ocean. It's not actually freezing water, of course; the temperature is somewhere around 40 degrees, but it still feels ridiculously cold when I park at my usual favorite spot near Cholada Thai on the Pacific Coast Highway and trek my way down to the water; I try to psych myself up by blasting “Speed Drive” by Charli XCX, which must look extremely sad to onlookers, but kind of works, in that I do eventually get in the water.

Being in the ocean has always lit me up with a kind of feral joy, but I don't think I would have quite literally taken the plunge today if I wasn't doing my cold immersion week; I prefer to bob around like a sexy cork on really hot days when the sea feels like bathwater, carefully smoothing my brain away from thinking about the climate impact that such warm water must have on the ocean ecosystem. (I'm very fun at parties.) Once I get home and exfoliate, though, I notice that the day at the beach has brought out my freckles, and when paired with the smoothest complexion I've seen in weeks, I can actually appreciate them for once.

As a purely skin-enhancing experiment, I can give a hearty endorsement to the cold-plunge lifestyle, but from an as-aforementioned coward's perspective, you might be better off just getting a really expensive moisturizer or something. Sure, it's very fun and manic-pixie-ish to find a way to submerge yourself in cold water daily, but can I be honest with you guys? My boobs are pissed at me. They never asked to be flash-frozen every day for a week! Mammals seek warmth for a reason!