Skincare is a scam mostly and what to try instead

It's just built up on our insecurities. You go to the store hoping to make yourself more beautiful or relieve a painful skin condition, you don't know what to choose because they all promise to "leave your skin smooth and healthy, reduce redness and fine lines, moisturize and protect, even the skintone, minimize pores, restore, hydrate" or whatever. Half of the words they use aren't even something that can be objectively assessed. So you begrudgingly pick something out after reading all the labels and checking online forums for reviews, pay good money for it only for it not to make any difference. Great. And rinse and repeat. But we keep doing it because we want to feel like we are taking care of ourselves and we want what they promise: beautiful, clear skin. But we don't have to play their way to get what we want.

Here's what I started to do. I think it's worth a try - you'll spend barely any money or effort and won't give your money to some schmucks that literally thrive on women's insecurities and it creates less waste. My skin is better than ever before, I don't have acne anymore and the weird little red spots on my cheek are gone. I can't guarantee that it will help everyone, who knows, but isn't it worth a try?

First of all I stopped using any soap or cleanser or whatever product to wash my face. If I wore makeup I remove it with coconut oil. In the evening I wash my face with only water, but in the morning I wash it with water and ground oatmeal dissolved in water. I started doing this because I read about people with cancer going through chemotherapy who got some sort of skin lesions because of it and researchers started putting a paste made of finely ground oatmeal on them. All of the patients experienced relief with no side effects: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17034418/

And this is my experience: I haven't had acne since I started doing this, only if I forget to wash with oatmeal for a day I tend to get acne then. Actually no, of course I did still get acne for a week or two when I started but after that it stopped.

Besides that, I use a skin cream with a sun protection factor of 50 before I go outside. Sun protection is probably the only thing that has any worth of all the creams and concoctions they sell. Like, preventing sun cancer is something worth spending money on, preventing wrinkles and "erasing pores" is not, not to me and I hope not to you, don't give them your money to fix some made up problem like that.

We're trapped in this cycle of buying more and more things to fix problems as they come up, but maybe we should cut down instead. Every product you use alters your skin in some way that can fix some problem but create another. You may think I'm a hippie or that you can't do the same because you have a serious skin problem and you couldn't live without the stuff you use to relieve it, but I also had big, painful acne and I tried lots of products, some did offer relief but none as much as oatmeal and not using soap. I can't say my way is the right way but I can say it helped me so I want you to try too.

P.S. Have you seen those people who have a whole mini fridge for their skincare products? When I see that, I feel such a visceral disgust with humanity lol