Clean

Alone in the space, I turn to the questionnaire, which looks like a form you might fill out in the waiting room of a doctor's office. There is a question about allergies and diet, along with a battery of questions about my skin: What exfoliants do I use? What moisturizers? What serums? What cleansers? How often have I been using each and in what order and combination?



This is a brief exercise for me, since I've been doing nothing. Yoon enters and welcomes me graciously, but the tone shifts when she sees the mostly blank form and learns that I have not simply forgotten to fill it out. "Oh my god," she says. "Are you safe to have a facial?"



"Yes! Of course-wait, why would I not be?" I hadn't really considered I was at risk before. Suddenly I'm worried. "I don't know-I mean, you tell me."



"It should probably be fine, I've just never done this on anyone . . . like this before," she trails off, either sad or disappointed or maybe both.



I lie down and she puts a bright light over my face. She touches my cheek lightly with her fingertip, then a little more firmly. Hesitantly, she says, "Have you ever felt your face?"



Funny she should ask.



I have made a point of almost never touching my face, ever since I was a teenager with "bad skin" who was under the now-obsolete impression that acne is caused by not cleaning well or aggressively enough. There were times the acne would extend to my eyelid as a stye that would nearly swell my eye shut. Social interaction became impossible because the appearance of my eye sucked all the attention out of any conversation. Even after my skin cleared up in college, I held on to the habit of keeping my hands-and the bacteria and viruses they carried-away from my face.



Not wanting to get into this long backstory, I tell Yoon that I touch my face "the normal amount," and she gets to work.



Yoon is no stranger to "problem" skin. She spent much of her life battling severe eczema, at times scratching her inflame