Skincare for Your Soul: Achieving Outer Beauty and Inner Peace with Korean Skincare

by Jude Chao

Overview

Take Your Skin to the Next Level with This Guide to Korean Skin Care

“This book feels like talking with a trusted friend, one so generous with practical advice and wisdom. I wish our Dermatology textbooks had chapters like these!” —Dr. Erin Tababa-Santos, creator of The Nerdy Derma

#1 New Release in Massage and Skin Ailments

Have you always longed for that fresh, glowing, no-makeup look? With this step-by-step guide to Korean skincare routines, anyone can attain healthy skin. But Skincare for Your Soul takes it one step further?it guides you to a place where skincare is also self-care.

The Korean skin care journey. As much as we’d like, glowing, clear skin doesn’t happen overnight. But there is beauty in the process?not just the results. Author Jude Chao links skincare to self-care culture, giving readers a practical guide to developing an ideal skincare routine and using it to help manage stress, anxiety, and depression. The Korean skincare routine invites us to look at our skincare not only as a way to reduce lines and wrinkles or clear up breakouts, but as a tool for developing our self-care habits.

Steady improvement is the goal. Photoshopped perfection is neither realistic nor a healthy goal. What matters is caring for our mental health and building our self-esteem by intentionally taking time each day to give our skin some love. But it starts with changing how we view skincare and developing a routine that fits our personal needs and goals, and Chao helps you do that.

Dive into Chao’s book on K-beauty and discover:

• An easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to skincare
• A clear breakdown of skincare products (not brands), and pros and cons to help customize your routine
• How Korean skin care can be a reliable and effective mental health management tool
• Tips for avoiding common types of exploitative and manipulative beauty marketing

If you enjoyed books like The Little Book of Skin Care, The Skincare Bible, or Glow from Within, you’ll love Skincare for Your Soul.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642504958
Publisher:	Mango Media
Publication date:	11/18/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	174
Sales rank:	947,464
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Jude Chao has been known for tying skincare to self-care since the publication of her essay, "How My Elaborate Korean Skincare Routine Helps Me Fight Depression" on Fashionista.com in 2015. Since then, she’s published steadily, both as a freelance beauty writer and on her blog, Fifty Shades of Snail. She’s also worked in beauty marketing and consulting for both Korean and American brands.

She has been featured in NYMag The Cut, called “the reigning queen of skincare” by NYMag The Strategist, and included in W’s list of “the Korean beauty experts you should follow on Instagram.” She remains active in online beauty communities, with a large network of like-minded followers and fellow content creators.

Table of Contents

Introduction

• Skincare as self-care: It’s not just skin-deep beauty

Chapter One

• Figuring out what your skin needs
  • Skin types: Dry, normal, oily, combination
  • Skin conditions: Dehydrated, sensitive, UV damaged (and the causes)
• On beauty standards and why "perfect" skin isn't the goal
• Skincare as a healthy outlet vs skincare as an unhealthy compulsion: What to watch out for; being mindful of thought patterns. Illustrate with personal anecdote.

Chapter Two

• Foundational skincare
  • Cleansing
  • Moisturizer
  • Sunscreen
• On the mental health benefits of a basic daily routine, and tips to motivate yourself to stick to it even during those times when just the act of washing your face feels like way too much work--aka dragging yourself out of bed and into the bathroom. Illustrate with personal anecdote.

Chapter Three

• Tools to improve your skin issues
• Korean skincare and Western skincare: Differences and similarities and whether you need to worry about where your cosmetics come from
  • Introduction to different product types and what needs they serve
    • Toner
    • Essence
    • Serum/Ampoule
    • Sheet masks
    • Wash-off masks
    • Moisturizers
    • Sleeping packs
  • On the importance of spacing out new product additions and taking notes of the effects of anything added to the routine
• On taking things one step at a time. Don't fall victim to completist pressure and think you have to have everything all at once; this is as true in life as it is in skincare. Tips on being comfortable with slow and incremental progress, and finding satisfaction in it. Talk about experiences with others (with permission) who've put pressure on themselves to have a "complete" routine and eventually learned to step away from the template.
• Discussion of how the "10 step routine" is marketing.

Chapter Four

• Ingredients to address specific skin issues
  • Actives
  • Hydrating ingredients/formulas
  • Moisturizing ingredients/formulas
  • Acne
  • Redness/sensitivity
  • Hyperpigmentation
  • Loss of elasticity and firmness
• How to read an ingredients list
• On the pleasures of learning and finding more resources to learn from: As you develop ingredient awareness and learn to read and interpret an ingredients list, remind yourself of what you're accomplishing and what you're enabling yourself to accomplish. It's personal growth, and growth should be celebrated. Illustrate with personal story.

Chapter Five

• Special chapter discussing some of the most typical marketing tricks and manipulative tactics to watch out for. The beauty industry is not always beautiful inside. That doesn't mean that all the products are worthless, but it does mean that the claims on the labels may be. Use examples for each one.
  • Photo editing and manipulation in advertising
  • Fear-based marketing ("no chemicals" etc)
  • Implied claims and weasel words
  • Claims ingredients at suboptimal concentrations
  • Age- and gender-based marketing

Chapter Six

• How to build your own skincare routine, one step at a time. Detailed and with particular effects to look out for (and to avoid) by product type.
• On progress pics, patience, and inevitable mishaps. Reminder: This isn't about achieving "perfection"--it's about achieving progress.
• How to recover from unfortunate encounters with unsuitable products, and how to develop a resilient attitude and optimism in the face of breakouts or lack of results. Personal anecdote. How to break anxiety spirals.

Chapter Seven

• Consistency is key, and so are reasonable expectations
• YMMV and why it's pointless to compare your own progress or your own results to others
  • Unrealistic comparisons and how detrimental they are, both to skin progress and general mental health
• On learning to value your own journey and your own achievements, regardless of how they match up to others. And on learning to find a community to support you along the way. Illustrate with personal stories from myself and others.

Ch​​apter Eight

• Conclusion: What we've learned along the way, where we're going, and what it means for our skin and our mental health and our lives