First Impressions: 5 K-Beauty Sunscreens for Summer

I get asked "what makes Korean beauty products better?" all the time, and the answer is always the same: they're not somehow magically better, because you can find good, bad, and mediocre products anywhere. They are quite innovative however, and where Asian cosmetics (including Korean beauty) really shine (in my eyes) is sunscreen.

If I could send a message to myself 10 years ago, before I moved to the US and into the desert, I'd tell myself about Asian sunscreens. I used to think I couldn't wear sunscreen, period! It gave me terrible skin reactions and felt unbearable. I got away with skipping sunscreen due to the relative weak sunlight in my region of Canada, but when I moved far south to an area of Texas that gets sandstorms, premature aging from epic sun damage happened fast.

I've rudely plunked my tray in the middle of the local wild bunny buffet

If I'd known there existed cosmetically elegant sunscreens that wouldn't cause my skin to erupt in painful breakouts within hours, I'd still be enjoying the same wrinkle-free smoothness the women in my family normally have until their 40's. Not to mention a lowered risk of, y'know, skin cancer.

In this post

• First impressions of 5 sunscreens from Goodal, Innisfree, & Make P:rem

I have reviewed one of these already, and I'm currently testing some of the others. Full reviews will come in the future, but after people on my Instagram expressed interest in a first impressions post, here they are!

Elizavecca Milky Piggy Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask Review: Tested & Detested

Mid-week is the perfect time for a mini-review of the famous Elizavecca Milky Piggy Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask.  (Update: my word counter tells me that "mini" review is a lie.  Eh, everything's relative!)  This mask is old news; it's a classic example of skincaretainment, and the product is more well-known for its entertainment value than the actual effects on the skin.  That's partly why I've avoided it until now, but it's summer and my skin is a slimy mess in this humidity so it's very ready for an occasional clay mask.  Why not one that inflates into a comically wide cloud of foam while on your face, making you look like a pixar character while doing double duty of first cleansing and clay mask style deep pore cleansing all in one go?

There is an inner jar lid/seal to keep air from reacting to the product.

Sounds too good to be true, right?  Plus, lots of people have used this mask, including fellow Snailcast podcaster Fifty Shades of Snail, so I purchased a jar of it and give it a try.  Then I dropped all irritants out of my routine and tried it again.  Sometimes, you have to just have to hurt yourself twice to confirm something is bad news.

In this post:

• Product details
• Ingredients
• What it did to my face
• What I'd rather use instead

Before using this mask the second time, I skipped anything that would compromise my moisture barrier for at least a week: no acid exfoliants, no manual exfoliants, no tretinoin, nothing to weaken my skin barrier or make me more sensitive.  I wanted to make sure there was no chance the culprit was just piling clay on top of sensitive skin.  Unfortunately, it still left my skin screaming for mercy and I smothered its cries with snail gel to recover.