4
The Magic of Exfoliation
(and How to Be K-Spa Savvy)
When I was a kid, my mom would make it a point to use a rough cloth to scrub my entire body, but once my mosquito-bite boobs started to sprout, those weekly scrub downs were not welcome anymore. It was up to me to continue that tradition in the bathtub, but instead, I used what all my friends used, which was a nice, soft loofah and a big bottle of fruity body wash.
But after I started making trips to the sauna as an adult, a wimpy loofah wasn’t enough. Now I use a washcloth to scrub from head to toe in the shower and have learned that exfoliating doesn’t just feel good, but that it’s actually good for you.
Let’s get technical for a second. Your skin naturally sheds billions of skin cells a day, which actually contributes to dust. Gross, right? But if it doesn’t shed properly, or if the shedding slows down, your skin can become dry and dull, and you may suffer from clogged pores and develop whiteheads, blemishes, and an uneven skin tone. This buildup of skin cells can even be the cause of those flaky skin flare-ups that are responsible for your makeup looking patchy and that can’t even be tamed with moisturizer. Exfoliation gives your body’s natural skin-cell shedding a boost and encourages cell regeneration, which results in a brighter and more even skin tone and smoother skin texture. You can exfoliate daily, weekly, or even just once a month, as it really depends on the condition of your skin.
Removing excess skin cells also helps your moisturizers and other products absorb more easily. Not having to fight through a layer of dead cells, your products can go straight to the epidermis, which ultimately means your skin will retain more moisture. The act of exfoliating can also help stimulate collagen production (to keep skin firm), improve circulation, and diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. If you’ve got oily or acne-prone skin, exfoliating helps clear away the dead skin cells that can get trapped in pores and cause blackheads and congestion.
Chemical or Mechanical: The Right Exfoliator for Your Skin
As we discussed before when talking about cleansers, the skin on your body is thicker than the skin on your face, so you don’t want to go to town on your elbows and cheeks with the same vigor, or tools. Exfoliators mostly fall into two categories: mechanical and chemical. Mechanical exfoliation uses products such as sugar scrubs or brush bristles (such as a Clarisonic) for the face, or Korean moms armed with Italy towels for the body, to physically slough off dead skin cells from the surface of the skin. Mechanical exfoliation is good for normal to combination skin, but be cautious of using these methods if you have active breakouts or dry or sensitive skin.
#sokosecret: Skin that’s frequently red, swollen, or itchy could have eczema. If you’re experiencing eczema, stay away from both mechanical and chemical exfoliators and instead focus on moisturizing to protect the skin’s barrier.
The downside here is that the physical nature of the mechanical exfoliation process can irritate skin, causing it to produce more oil and leading to more acne. If you have active pimples (such as those with a white tip), avoid mechanical exfoliators, as you don’t want pimples to burst and spread bacteria to the surrounding skin.
Even without acne, you should still handle mechanical exfoliators with care. For example, if you’re using an electric rotating brush, limit the amount of time and pressure you press the rotating brush on your skin. Also, be careful of what mechanical exfoliants are used, because if the material used to make the scrub isn’t high quality, the rough, sharp edges of the granules can actually cause micro-tears in your skin.
In general, look for ingredients such as sugar, jojoba beads, or oatmeal, as all are fairly gentle on skin. Walnut and apricot scrubs, while popular, have uneven and odd-shaped granules that can have sharp edges and spell bad news for your skin.
If you’re using a rotating brush or exfoliating cloth for your face, you can use it during the second step of your double cleanse with your water-based cleanser. If you’re using a separate exfoliating scrub, do your double cleanse, then use the scrub on wet skin, wash it off, and follow with your toner.
On the flip side, chemical exfoliation uses acids or enzymes to remove dead skin cells. Acids and enzymes break down and dissolve the lipids that act like glue and hold the dead skin cells together. Some acids can even work deep into pores to remove sebum, which is an extra bonus, because dead skin cells aren’t just on the surface—they can settle deep into pores.
Acids used in chemical exfoliators are categorized as alpha hydroxy acids (AHA) and beta hydroxy acids (BHA). Some common AHAs include glycolic acid and lactic acid, and both can be found in skin-care products in concentrations from 5 to 15 percent. Starting at 12 percent, it’s considered a chemical peel.
#sokosecret: If you want something even gentler, enzymes (like bromelain and papain, which come from fruit) are an alternative to acids and digest the proteins between skin cells to help loosen up and sweep away dead ones.
Glycolic acid is a smaller molecule than lactic acid, so it penetrates into your pores very quickly, which can lead to irritation. Lactic acid is a larger molecule, penetrating more slowly, and is thus gentler than glycolic.
A popular BHA is salicylic acid, which is great for acne-prone and oily skin types because it breaks down oil and clogged pores and is anti-inflammatory and antibacterial. Most salicylic acid skin-care products can be applied and left on throughout the day if they have concentrations of 1 to 2 percent; anything higher than that should be rinsed off. Once again, moderation is key, as overusing salicylic acid can dry out your skin.
For chemical exfoliants, you’ll want to apply them after washing your face and using your toner. Be careful to avoid the eye area, since this is extra-sensitive skin, and then follow with the rest of your skin-care routine in order. If you’re using any retinols or prescribed products, double-check with your doctor to make sure that these products can be used together safely.
#sokosecret: Both glycolic and lactic acid have hydrating properties, which means you get to fight signs of aging and hyperpigmentation and plump up your skin while exfoliating. Bonus points.
Dead Skin: Your Body’s Natural SPF
After you use chemical or mechanical exfoliators, you mustn’t forget to moisturize! Exfoliation weakens your skin’s barrier, and you want to rehydrate and protect with a good moisturizer.
As important as it is to exfoliate, dead skin cells do act as your body’s natural defense against the sun, and banishing them makes you extra sensitive to UV rays. You’re more susceptible now to hyperpigmentation and sun damage, so it’s incredibly important to regularly use at least an SPF 30 after you exfoliate. But let’s be honest, you should be using an SPF every day regardless of whether you’ve exfoliated (more on that in chapter six).
Serious Exfoliation: Welcome to the World of Korean Spas
The spa is the cornerstone of Korean beauty culture. There are Korean spas (also known as K-spas) all over the world in major cities and suburbs with large Korean populations, and you can find them the same way you would a Western spa: get recommendations from friends and magazines, and read online customer reviews. However, the similarities might end there.
Even if you’ve never been to a spa, you’ve probably seen the experience portrayed in movies or on TV—you know, rich, snooty ladies sipping antioxidant beverages in near-total silence with cucumber slices over their eyes.
Now, to prepare yourself for a jimjilbang—the Korean word for spa, which roughly translates to “heated room”—throw all those ideas out the window. First off, a jimjilbang is very much a family and group affair, so you won’t be wrapping yourself in a luxurious robe and retreating into solitude to the ambient noises of a birdsong CD. Instead, jimjilbangs are often multigenerational gathering spots where people go to get clean and chill out with their mothers, daughters, sisters, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, friends, and even significant others. You’re as likely to see a four-year-old at a Korean spa as you are a seventy-four-year-old.
Korean spas are also all-day affairs. Instead of booking a treatment and then leaving as soon as it’s over, you can eat, read, and snooze at the K-spa. And most are open twenty-four hours, so you can stay until the next morning.
If you’re a total newbie and don’t know what to expect, the K-spa can be a little jarring your first time (there’s a lot of nudity involved, so you’ll have to check your modesty at the door), but once you know what to expect, you’ll likely become addicted.
Here, let me walk you through a day at the K-spa:
Checking In
Korean spas have separate areas for men and women, but also areas where everyone can hang out together. When you check in at one of these spas, you’ll likely be given a key with a number that corresponds to the locker where you’ll store your clothes and personal belongings, as well as a color-coded outfit to wear in coed areas. Men get one color and women get another, and these shorts and T-shirt combos fall someplace between pajamas and the gym clothes you wore in junior high. They’re not cute, but they’re comfortable, and that’s the whole point.
The Shower
Once you’re in the locker room, you’ll change out of your street clothes, but don’t put your spa clothes on yet. This is where the nakedness comes in. As soon as you’re au naturel, you’ll head to the showers, where you’ll wash off before getting into any of the hot tubs or saunas. This helps ensure that the spa doesn’t have hundreds of people a day bringing grime from the streets into the pools. You’ll wash your hair, your face, and your body, and all thoroughly.
#sokosecret: Some spas provide shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. You can call ahead to see if you need to bring your own, or if you’re particularly picky about products, you might want to do so anyway.
This is probably the part where you’ll start to notice that nakedness is treated a little different from how it is in your gym locker room, where people try to change and shower as quickly as possible to minimize their time sans clothes. At the Korean spa, ladies will be walking around naked, having conversations naked, and even helping each other get clean—it’s not uncommon to see friends or relatives standing butt naked and scrubbing each other’s backs with exfoliating cloths.
Your first time, you’ll probably feel a little shy, but hopefully this will fade as you see how comfortable everyone else is and as you settle into the fact that everyone is so into scrubbing their own limbs that they aren’t paying you or your bits any attention.
The Wet Room
Tucked inside the locker room and still single-sex, the wet room will have tons of different pools and hot tubs. The hot tubs will likely have several different temperatures ranging from just lukewarm to piping hot, and some might have strategically placed jets for aqua-acupressure, to help relieve joint pain and enhance circulation. Some of the pools may even be filled with mineral or herbal treatments. A common one is the mugwort tea pool, which is said to help increase circulation and decrease inflammation.
The wet room will also probably have traditional dry saunas and steam rooms, as well as a cold plunge, which is a shock to the system that’s supposed to get your blood flowing and help with lymphatic drainage.
Treatments and Body Scrubs
Most K-spas also offer treatments, ranging from massages to facials to classic body scrubs. The body scrub is one of my favorite things about Korean spa culture (it’s the most hard-core exfoliation around), but again, it might be a bit of a shock if you hear the word “treatment” and think private room with scented candles.
If you’ve signed up for a treatment at a K-spa, you’ll likely be asked to stay in the wet room until it’s your time, and then someone will call your number or come find you.
The ladies (or men, for the guys) who perform the treatments are no-nonsense and usually dressed in uniform black underwear (nothing sexy: think maximum-coverage granny panties). Once they call your number, you’ll proceed to the treatment area and lie down on a plastic-covered massage table.
As soon as you’re lying down, they’ll dump a bucket of warm water on you to start, then begin scrubbing you from head to toe. These scrubs are done with force and conviction and cover almost every inch. They will have you cock your knees open so that they can scrub your inner thighs, and while your modesty might cringe here, just remind yourself that they do this dozens of times a day and have seen it all before.
You’ll be surprised to learn that you can actually see the dead skin cells being sloughed off, which roll off your back in gross little gray balls. It’s disgusting, yes, but also highly satisfying. There’s a sternness to a Korean body scrub as well, and to me, it always feels as if an aunt who has known me my entire life is simply scrubbing me down.
Most scrubs will conclude with a quick head and neck massage and a shampoo, and then you get up from the table feeling ten pounds lighter and with a shiny glow all over your body.
In case I haven’t already made it clear, let me repeat myself: These scrubs are intense. I have a high threshold for pain, so they’re not painful for me in the slightest, but every person is different. I’ve had friends with much more sensitive skin emerge bright red and on the verge of tears. The key here is to know what’s right for you and communicate that to the lady in black undies. If something hurts, or she’s scrubbing too hard, she won’t know unless you tell her. Again, an important rule about the K-spa: Don’t be shy!
#sokosecret: Most K-spas use Italy towels for these body scrubs. They’re basically large mittens made of 100 percent viscose, and they come in bright colors. These towels are a Korean invention, but the fabric was first imported from Italy in the 1960s—hence the name. You can also buy your own Italy towels to use at home. They can be purchased for as little as a dollar each from Amazon or eBay.
The Family Room
After you’re supersmooth from your intense body scrub, you’ll put on your spa pajamas and head up to the communal coed rooms. Here, you’ll see entire families, single people, and couples doing some serious lounging. They’ll read comic books, watch dramas, gossip, or nap. One awesome thing about this room is that the floor is heated, so dozing off on a hard surface has never been so comfortable. It’s not uncommon to see people snoring away, surrounded by chaos, directly on the floor, on a mat resting on a brick-shaped pillow, or in a reclining chair.
Many Korean spas have snack bars or full-on restaurants, so you can munch on everything from baked eggs to cold bowls of naengmyun (long, thin noodles in chilled broth) complete with banchan, an assortment of small, complimentary side dishes to sweet desserts like patbingsoo (red beans with shaved ice and condensed milk). At a lot of these places, your final bill is attached to your locker number, so you don’t have to take cash or cards with you—you can just use your number and pay for everything at the end.
Here, there’s no such thing as overstaying your welcome. In Korea, twenty-four-hour jimjilbangs are often a safe haven for salarymen and -women who stumble in too drunk to make the trek home before work the next morning, and these spas are especially popular in the winter, when people want to take maximum advantage of the heated floors.
The Dry Saunas
Around the heated floor, you’ll see several doors that lead to different saunas. These range anywhere from 60˚F to 200˚F, and all promote resting, healing, and rejuvenation.
Each Korean spa will be different, but the sauna arrangement will likely be something like this: the salt sauna, full of said minerals to help with skin conditions; the jade sauna, supposedly good for reducing stress; the clay sauna, full of thousands of tiny clay balls that you can bury yourself in to be warmed from all sides; and the bulgama, which is like baking yourself in a clay pizza oven heated to more than 200˚F. For all of these, you’ll wear your spa pajamas, and you can stay as long as you want, though the recommended use is ten to twenty minutes. If you’re new to saunas, start small and work up to a longer period of time. Also, keep in mind that heat affects everyone differently. If it makes you feel light-headed or dizzy, the bulgama might not be for you, even if there’s an old lady happily snoozing away just a few feet from you. You can close your round of sauna-going with a stop in the ice igloo, which is a cold room said to firm the skin. It will also jolt you out of your overall Korean drama–naengmyun-sauna jimjilbang stupor and prepare you for your harsh return to the real world.
Korea’s Communal Culture
When I first planned to move to Korea, my parents and friends at home worried that I’d be lonely. It turned out that they weren’t right, but they weren’t entirely wrong either.
In the beginning, I spent a lot of time alone in my little studio (also known as an “officetel,” a portmanteau of “office” and “hotel” that refers to a residence in a multiuse building) near the company. I had plunked down quite a bit of cash (my meager life savings) to rent it, so I was forced to snag most of my furniture from expats who were selling it at majorly discounted rates when it was time for them to leave the country and return home.
My setup included a small, collapsible picnic table and bench that I used as my dining table and seating. One foot away from the dining table was my mattress, and right next to that was the kitchen. Let’s just say that it wasn’t in my best interest to cook anything that was particularly odorous, or else I’d run the high chance that my pajamas, hair, and socks would smell like last night’s fried fish.
I quickly learned to avoid cooking fragrant dishes in the apartment, but it turned out to be not a huge deal at all. Korea’s takeout options are on par with, if not exceed, Manhattan’s. I could just order delivery, and in minutes, someone would bring fresh black bean noodles with all the side dishes in real dishware. After I was finished, I would leave the dirty dishes in a baggie outside my door, and the delivery guy would pick them up on his next round. It was hangover heaven.
Also similar to Manhattan, Seoul is so dense that stepping outside of my apartment meant I was seconds away from yummy bakeries, coffee shops, and convenience stores filled with snacks. Mom-and-pop restaurants that served home-style comfort foods were plentiful and inexpensive. Aside from a few fast-food dishes (such as In-N-Out, which I crave even now, since I live on the East Coast), I typically didn’t hunger for anything non-Korean, because it was easy to find international food options: pizza, pasta, pad thai, and tacos that were, honest to God, just as yummy as they were stateside.
As I had expected, the Korean food was mouthwatering. Steamy and spicy stews, chewy rice cakes, and fresh veggie dishes were at my disposal—except for one thing: many of my favorite dishes were designed to be shared. Korean BBQ platters and spicy stews like budae jjigae could only be served if you were ordering family-style servings. Now, I could eat a lot, but BBQ for two was beyond my capacity.
I soon learned that food in Korea isn’t the only thing meant to be shared, and there’s a lot of value placed on spending quality time with your friends and family. It’s why spas are designed to be all-ages affairs—why would you want to go somewhere if you couldn’t take your daughter and your grandma with you?
Although I never cared about eating alone at a restaurant in the past, I suddenly felt awkward sitting by myself inside a bustling restaurant while groups around me shared drinks and platters of meat and pots of soup. This newfound awkwardness made me inhale my meals. I also became much more vigilant about planning meals with friends, so that I could work in some family-style dishes whenever I could.
My colleagues at work were always curious about how I was faring, because typically Koreans don’t live in their own apartments until they go off and get married to start their own families. My early-twenties self, eating ramen alone in front of the TV, was actually totally fine with me—I’d been living independently since I was eighteen back home—but for many Koreans who learned of my plight, it seemed incredibly lonely.
Korea had always seemed very lovey-dovey to me, as it was not uncommon to see couples spooning as they slept in the jimjilbang, or cuddled up in a café corner and watching dramas on a shared iPad. But as I started to understand that most relationships had no privacy until the couple was married, this made total sense to me. It beats the hell out of hanging out with friends or your boyfriend at home, with your parents an earshot away from your high school angst.
I was also used to the get in, get out café culture in the United States, where asking for the Wi-Fi password is a shameful admission. However, Korean cafés didn’t care if you lingered and actually encouraged it. Soon, the cafés were like my second living room and my preferred space to work, read, or catch up on e-mails.
Looking back, it was this communal side of Korean culture that I ended up embracing the most. My immediate family was not with me in Seoul, but my relatives and the new people I met made me feel as if I had always been part of their lives. It was clear to me that after about a year my work colleagues and I had jeong, which roughly means “playful affection,” for each other. So when someone I worked with asked, “Why is your Korean still horrible?” or would tease me by saying, “Honestly, your date is too good-looking for you,” I didn’t get offended—they were treating me as if they were cousins I’d known my whole life.
Fortunately, whenever I get nostalgic for this cozy feeling, I can just make the trek to one of New York City’s many Korean spas. Sure, there’s probably no one there who will insult me because they like me so much, but I can still put on strange pajamas and nap on a heated jimjilbang floor, dreaming of budae jjigae and hotteok (sweet pancakes) in Seoul.
SKIN STORIES: India-Jewel Jackson
MANAGING EDITOR, HEARST MAGAZINES DIGITAL MEDIA
An afternoon at a Western spa is usually all about pampering and de-stressing, while an afternoon at a Korean spa is more about socializing. You go to lounge in the bath, catch up with your friends, and get a thorough cleansing simultaneously. I first discovered the Korean spa because I was searching for a twenty-four-hour spa in New York—I wanted to schedule a midnight massage for my mom to start her birthday off right. The only place I could find that offered this was a spot in Koreatown. After looking through the vast menu, I decided to go to the spa with her and have been hooked ever since!
My skin feels freakishly soft after a body scrub, and I love how squeaky clean I feel when they’re done. Ironically, I hate how naked I have to be to experience it. I’ll never feel comfortable walking around stark-naked in front of fifty strangers no matter how many times I go.
One thing: Whether you’re visiting a Korean spa in New York City, Los Angeles, or Seoul, be prepared for the possibility of a language barrier, but it’s unlikely to be an actual problem. Thanks to service menus and animated hand gestures, beauty is its own universal language. And it always works out in the end!
