Holy Grails: BODY (Part 1)

I’ll start this letter with an obligatory thank you to God, chance, karma, and my luckiest stars that I have a pretty agreeable body to occupy during my time here on earth. I see the memes about hot girls having IBS, and I hear about the absolute hell of PCOS, and MS, and ALS, obesity, heart disease, and allergies, plaque psoriasis, and lactose intolerance…even having huge tits sounds like a nightmare.

I realize I could be smitten by fate’s cold hand at any given moment, so while it’s not perfect, I’m quite pleased with my body. Most days I even find it pretty hot. Not My Body hot (too hot, apparently! I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!), but my body hot. That’s not to say I don’t have my complaints:

1. I have a bad knee which never fully healed after a catastrophic event (arthritic). My kneecap dislocated while doing a fouetté turn in ballet class, and the backside shattered in the process. The good thing is that I got to stop going to ballet class. I find choreographed movements torturous and performing them humiliating, as I lack the required short-term and muscle memory. I am thankful, though, to have had good posture literally beaten into me from an early age. A decade of ballet training was the perfect foundation for the sport I am meant to play: pilates. Good posture is the #1 key to looking hot and feeling beautiful.

2. Sensitive skin. Every time I see someone with scarless, smooth, even-toned body skin I wonder what problems they do suffer from to compensate for this.

3. Not totally its fault, but prescription stimulants make some people sweat excessively during exercise. I almost lost a front tooth once slipping around during hot yoga. You won’t find any “all natural” deodorants made with baking soda and happy thoughts on this list. Give me aluminum and give me death, allegedly.

4. Fucked up feet. I spent a decade of my hot young life getting things with my feet under control after swim team infected my bare feet with all sorts of chlorine-resistant diseases. I undid much of this when I gave my COVID boyfriend a pedicure and didn’t properly disinfect my tools. I pearl clutch whenever I see you people going barefoot in public saunas or locker rooms. Irresponsible. I don’t even get pedicures for fear of the abrasive scrubbing possibly exposing someone else to a dormant foot virus. I cannot have this on my conscience. We need more of a community mindset when it comes to foot health because you people are sick.

5. My tattoo. As one of the several things we have in common, Michael Jordan and I, regrettably, have the same single tattoo. I just had to know what it was like, and used a fake ID, so I got it in an inconspicuous area. Besides the artist and myself, only one other person has ever seen it……..

If you’re new here, the drill with my Holy Grails lists is that I put all of my favorite products in a spreadsheet with a description and links. This is because I get asked for product recommendations constantly, but in the twelve years I’ve been writing about beauty on the internet, I rarely switch things up, so this is most efficient for everyone involved.

Currently, there’s HAIR, SKIN (face), and MAKEUP, but the BODY category is a wild one. Retailers use it as a catchall for anything in the bathroom that doesn’t make sense in the first three categories. I won’t be discussing candles or shower filters (a scam) today, but let’s get into my theories and personal best practices on all things inside the mouth and below the neck.

36 soaps, fragrances, lotions, and more await you below, along with some mildly controversial opinions on UV exposure, dieting, and everyone’s obsession with locking their feet in tennis shoes.

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