Lotion Commotion

I’ve sparked off a new debate! Challenging all conventional wisdom. In real life, nobody believes me, so I’m taking the debate to you, my readers…. 90% of whom might not even be real people for all I really know and can prove. If you are following my blog, then I feel that you are intelligent, sensible, and wonderful all at the same time. I don’t know why I didn’t just come to you first. Now, I’m not necessarily looking for people to agree with my argument. In fact, it might be more fun if you don’t.

Here’s the topic for debate….. I personally think that Hand and Body Moisturizer is as addictive as most narcotics, and regular use of it is detrimental to your existence.

I have absolutely no scientific evidence to support the above statement, and I’m way to lazy to do any actual research on it. The logic is sound though. I believe that your skin moisturizes itself. In certain climates like this extremely dry Canadian winter climate that I’m currently stuck in, your skin may not be able to produce enough moisture to properly protect itself. In these instances it totally makes sense to use a product like body lotion to help out your skin a bit. There are a lot of people who use lotion every day. Some even twice a day. My wife for example….(I wasn’t going to talk about her in this blog because of a ‘respect my privacy’ thing, but when I realized I couldn’t poke fun at the #1 lotion addict in my life, it made me sad, and less passionate about presenting the topic here. Then in a wonderful twist of fate, I asked her permission to talk about her lotion addiction, and she didn’t directly say no, so the topic is on the table as long as I was willing to present some of her counter points which I think is only fair). She uses lotion at least twice a day. She is a lotion addict. Now I should mention that she does have great skin, and often passes for 10 years younger than she is (or as she put it just now ‘I’m gonna look like this when I’m 70, what are you gonna look like hatchet face?…… I should explain that I have a ‘concentrate face’ which has me squishing my face together when concentrating, thus creating a permanent line between my eyebrows which my wife lovingly refers to as a hatchet mark), but she has a little secret, and it’s called addiction. To the general public she doesn’t appear to be an addict, but they haven’t been around for an episode of her suddenly and feverishly scratching her leg, and yelling ‘get the lotion, quick!!!’. I go and get her fix, but who knows how long until the next withdrawal. You would think that lotion twice a day would prevent such a thing.

My theory is that if you put lotion on your body too often to help with dry skin, then your body will stop producing its own moisture, ironically creating a dependency on the lotion which was supposed to be solving the problem (not unlike an addiction to painkillers). Somebody that uses lotion twice a day probably does so because their skin has already dried up from the first usage, and because their body no longer produces moisture, they have to put on a second dose. When I do actually put lotion on my body to combat my own dry skin, my skin feels soft for days, because I’m just using it as a little boost to augment my already ‘moisture producing’ skin.

My son is now the ultimate guinea pig. He gets lotioned up twice a day as per his mom, and various medical websites that I consulted. At just over a year, he’s not old enough to form his own opinion about how often he should have lotion on his skin. When he is old enough, it might be too late.

I have a friend who I play basketball with who only recently learned how to apply lotion to that hard to reach area on his back, by using the back of his hand. He claims that he’s never been happier with his lotion situation, and that he only uses lotion in the winter. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t put lotion on his hands, and washes them a lot. Even I would say that he could use some lotion on his hands. So the question came up….. ‘Why would you go to all the trouble to put lotion on your back, and then not put lotion on your hands as well (which is way easier)?’ His answer was that when his hands get itchy, he can just scratch them, but when his back gets itchy…… Interesting perspective. This guy uses lotion for the specific purpose of avoiding ‘hard to scratch’ itchiness, but general ‘easy to scratch’ itchiness is acceptable, because he can just scratch it. If I was a girl right now, I would say “Only a guy would do that!” As a guy, I understand.

I did say I would represent my wife’s opinion on this matter as well, since I brought her unwillingly into this debate. She would want the world to know that a lot of people comment on how great her skin is, and that she is often mistaken for being roughly 8 years younger than she is, which is all true. She gives full credit to her army of anti-aging creams and moisturizers. She is also militant about avoiding sun damage, and has the whole family (myself included) wearing the highest possible level of sunscreen, and claims that she is responsible for me not turning into a ‘Hatchety Leatherface’ as a result of these precautions. Just so I’m not tipping the argument too far into her favor, I will remind the public that she often suffers through what I would describe as ‘Lotion Withdrawal Symptoms’, or LWS as it will be called henceforth.

Now you’ve heard both arguments. What do you think?