Skincu ad: Korean Mother-in-Law: “This Is Poison”

I flew 14 hours from Seoul to meet my son’s American wife. The first thing I did in her house was throw her skincare in the trash. All of it. ⠀ I know how that sounds. Let me explain. ⠀ My name is Mi-sook. I’m 71. My son Daniel moved to Chicago for work twelve years ago, married an American woman named Jennifer, and had two beautiful children I had only ever seen on a phone screen. Last spring, they finally invited me to stay. Six weeks. ⠀ Jennifer met me at the airport. Lovely woman. Warm, a little nervous, kept apologizing for the cold. She’s 52. And she was wearing a thick cardigan, buttoned to the wrist, in a heated car. ⠀ I noticed. Korean mothers-in-law notice everything. ⠀ That first night, after a dinner she had clearly worked very hard on, I went to take a bath. I opened the cabinet in the guest bathroom looking for a towel. ⠀ It was full. Top to bottom. ⠀ Firming body cream, $89. Another firming body cream, a different brand, $74. A retinol body lotion. A glycolic acid body wash. A “resurfacing” scrub with little rocks in it. A “collagen boosting” serum for the neck. A “tightening” cream for the arms that smelled like a hospital. A body butter so thick it could have been used to grease a car. ⠀ I counted. More than $600 of products. ⠀ I read the backs of the bottles. Water. Water. Water. Almost everything was mostly water. And the rest was acid, retinol and scrubs. Things that burn. Things that peel. Things that tear. ⠀ On a 52-year-old woman’s skin. ⠀ I stood in that bathroom and I felt angry. Not at Jennifer. At whoever had sold her this. At an entire industry that had looked at a woman going through menopause and decided the answer was to set her skin on fire and then pour water on it. ⠀ So I went to the kitchen, took a garbage bag, came back, and emptied the cabinet into it. ⠀ Every single bottle. ⠀ Jennifer walked in halfway through. She just stood there in the doorway with her mouth open. ⠀ “Mi-sook... what are you doing?” ⠀ “This is poison,” I said. My English is not perfect. It came out harsher than I meant it to. ⠀ She burst into tears and ran upstairs. ⠀ Daniel was furious. He shouted at me in Korean in the kitchen. Did I know how much that cost? Did I know how hard she’d been trying? Did I know she’d been dreading meeting me for twelve years? I had been in his house for five hours and I’d already made his wife cry. ⠀ He was right. I went to bed ashamed. But I left the garbage bag by the back door. I didn’t take one bottle out. ⠀ The next morning at breakfast, nobody spoke. Jennifer wouldn’t look at me. The children could feel it. ⠀ It was warm that day, so I wore a sleeveless blouse. Jennifer poured my tea, and I saw her eyes go to my arms and stay there. ⠀ At 71, my arms are smooth. Soft. No crinkle above the elbows. No tissue-paper skin on the backs of my hands. Not because I’m lucky. Not because of genes. My mother’s arms were the same at 85. So were my grandmother’s. ⠀ Jennifer finally spoke. Very quietly. “How?” ⠀ So I told her what every Korean girl learns from her mother. ⠀ After menopause, your skin stops making its own oil. That oil was the seal. It held the moisture in. When it’s gone, the skin loses water all day and all night. It gets thin. It crinkles. It folds. It creases. That’s the papery skin on your arms. That’s the folds above your knees. ⠀ And what do American companies sell you for that? ⠀ Water, which evaporates in an hour. Acid and retinol, which burn away what little protection you have left. Scrubs, which tear skin that is already thin. ⠀ They are making it worse. Then they sell you the next jar. ⠀ In Korea, we do something so simple it’s almost embarrassing. After the bath, before the towel, while the skin is still damp, you put oil on. Arms, legs, stomach, neck, hands. Every night. Slowly. Upward. That’s all. No burning. No peeling. No ten steps. Just give the skin back what it lost. ⠀ Jennifer looked at me for a long time. Then she said the words I will never forget. ⠀ “I’ve been wearing long sleeves since I was 46. I wore a jacket to my own anniversary dinner. I was going to wear one to the airport to pick you up so you wouldn’t think I’d let myself go.” ⠀ Now I was the one crying. ⠀ That night she knocked on my door after her shower, holding a towel around herself. “Show me,” she said. ⠀ I’d brought my own oil from home, but I’d found the same kind here online years ago when Daniel first moved. No water in it at all. Just oils. I poured a little into her hands and showed her how. Damp skin. Upward strokes. Slowly. Like you’re taking care of something, not fighting it. ⠀ We did it together every night for six weeks. It became our time. She told me about her mother. I told her about mine. Daniel would hear us laughing upstairs and shake his head. ⠀ After two weeks, she came down to breakfast and held out her arm. “Feel.” Soft. All day, she said. Not for an hour like the creams. ⠀ After four weeks, the crinkle above her elbows was visibly smoother. The backs of her hands looked less papery. She stopped buttoning her cardigan. ⠀ On my last day, she drove me to the airport in a sleeveless blouse. ⠀ At the gate, she hugged me for a long time and whispered, “Thank you for throwing out my stuff.” ⠀ I’ve told this story to every woman I know in Seoul. They all laugh. Of course, they say. Who puts water on dry skin? ⠀ If you have a cabinet like Jennifer’s, I won’t fly over and empty it for you. But maybe you should. ⠀ This is the oil Jennifer and I both use now 👇