I ruined my beard color with castor oil. Not dramatically, not overnight, but after four months of daily use, my bright copper beard had shifted to a muddy auburn that looked like someone had added a brown Instagram filter to my face. Nobody in the “best beard oils” articles warned me, because…
I was 21 when a dermatologist told me I had rosacea. My response was, “Isn’t that what older women get?” which tells you how much I knew. The reality is that rosacea affects an estimated 16 million Americans, disproportionately targets people of Northern European descent with fair skin, and is…
I have tested over 30 mineral sunscreens in the past three years, and I’ve looked like a ghost in approximately 24 of them. The white cast problem is the single biggest reason redheaded men skip sunscreen, which is roughly equivalent to a hemophiliac skipping band-aids because they don’t like the…
I learned about the MC1R gene in a college biology lab, and my first thought was: “Oh, so there’s a scientific reason I got sunburned through a hoodie.” That’s barely an exaggeration. The melanocortin 1 receptor gene is the single most important factor in how your skin behaves, how it ages, how it…
I grew my first beard at 19, mostly because I thought it would make me look older. Instead, it made me look like a copper Brillo pad had been glued to my face by a prankster with a grudge. The thing about ginger beards is that nobody tells you they play by completely different rules. Your…
