The room flickers with the light of a hundred votive candles. A Puccini aria fills the air. You perch your glass of wine on the marble tile and slip out of your robe. Closing your eyes, you settle back in the tub until the water washes over your shoulders. The aria reaches a crescendo. . .
What? Not part of your daily routine? Welcome to the club. No matter how popular the plethora of bath concoctions and fizzy cubes, many women simply don’t have time to steep in a tub of herbs as regularly as they would like. They have to make lunches for the kids, find the car keys and get to work.
Does no time mean no pampering? No way! Step into your shower as usual with an unusually beautiful bar of soap or bottle of gel and get a quick fix of aromatherapy without fear of a schedule conflict.
“The gels are easy to use, they foam beautifully and they smell like heaven,” says Barbara Salomone, who is a member of the board of directors of the Chicago Cosmetology Association and is president of her own line of skin care products for spa professionals. “They leave your skin feeling soft.”
Low-maintenance types still might be a little suspicious of them as a substitute for simple soap. But liquid soaps and body washes now make up more than 40 percent of the personal hygiene market, according to Datamonitor, a market analysis company.
Since 1989, when specialty stores began sprouting up, bath and shower products have been the fastest-growing segment of the personal hygiene market, according to Datamonitor.
“Years ago everybody washed their face and body with a bar of soap,” Salomone says. “That’s history for a lot of people.”
Despite the popularity of some of the specialty soaps and gels, Dr. Marianne O’Donoghue, associate professor of dermatology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Dermatology, says many of the new products can be drying. Trial and error is really the only way to tell.
“Immediately after you bathe, your skin will feel taut because the sebum, the natural oil on your skin that dirt clings to, has to be removed to be clean,” she says. “So you feel squeaky clean immediately after washing. But if you’re still dry 20 minutes later, then it means that the soap you’re using is too strong.”
Sometimes the lathering power of the liquid soaps is actually an enemy, she says. It can “bubble all the oil right out of the skin,” O’Donoghue says.
In the Midwest, she advises holding off on the liquid soaps until the summer months, when humidity is up and people can take their pores out for regular exercise. For her part, she prefers the gentleness of soaps like Dove, Aveeno Oatmeal and Basis and recommends them to those with sensitive skin.
Those who wish to strike a compromise between the succulent liquid soaps and the basic drugstore brands will find a multitude of choices from such specialty stores as the Body Shop, L’Occitane en Provence, Bliss in New York and Fresh in Boston.
Whatever the choice for daily bathing, it’s good occasionally to delve a little deeper. Origins Let’s Circulate Salt Rub soap ($12) uses sea salts to smooth the skin, and Origins Sensory Therapy Skin Diver body soap ($8.50) contains activated charcoal to attack clogged pores (both available at the Origins Water Tower store). Bath & Body Works Smoothing Body Scrub in Sun-Ripened Raspberry ($7.50) exfoliates with fruit acids, pumice and aloe vera (call 800-395-1001 for stores).
Let experience be your guide, O’Donoghue says.
“It’s not the ingredients in soaps that are important, it’s the finished product,” she says. “If you like the way a soap cleans and makes your skin feel, that’s what matters.”
READING LABELS
Anti-bacterial: Beware of this word on labels. These formulas can be so harsh that they actually damage the skin, making it more vulnerable to infection, warns dermatologist Marianne O’Donoghue.
Glycerin: This natural humectant and emollient usually can be used even on sensitive skin.
Shea butter: From the fruits of the shea tree in Africa, this substance is loaded with fatty acids, good for moisture and skin elasticity.
Milk lipids: Emollients found in milk now enrich some bath products.
Oatmeal: Then: what grandma threw you in when you had chicken pox. Now: a luxury soak. Dr. O’Donoghue says, “Oatmeal is soothing because its gentle mechanical cleansing is enough to dislodge dirt without irritating.”
Sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate: This detergent is the guts of a bar of soap, important for cleaning skin.
“All natural ingredients”: Not necessarily a good thing. “Natural does not mean better,” Dr. O’Donoghue warns. “Remember, poison ivy is a natural ingredient.” Citrus and its extracts, for example, can cause some skin reactions.
Essential oils: These oils found in every botanical carry the aroma molecules. If your nose can’t distinguish between the real and the synthetic, your eyes can: The real oils add up on the price tag.
