Brought to you by Burt’s Bees
Good skincare should be easy to maintain year-round. Does your skincare routine hold up amid busy schedules and changing seasons? Cold winters can be harsh on skin. It can be a challenge to find skincare products that are gentle enough to keep your skin balanced as the temperature drops. Burt’s Bees’ new skincare duo—the Breakout Defense Foaming Wash and Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant from the Clear and Balanced Collection—is simple and effective enough to withstand the busiest of routines and harshest of weather climates. Developed by Burt’s Bees product designer and chemist, Abena Antwi, these products were designed with all skin tones in mind to help balance breakout-prone skin and provide daily defense against key breakout triggers. Host Scottie Beam sits down with Antwi and makeup artist Keanda Snagg to share how their skin changes with the seasons, and discuss how they fit skincare in their daily routines.
Seasonal Skin
Beam opens the conversation by describing how environmental factors can affect her skin as the seasons change. “You know the seasons change—everything’s gotta change. The nail color has to change, the outfits have to change, the hair color changes, okay? But what also changes is my skin, especially during the wintertime… My skin gets really, really dry.”
Beam asks Abena Antwi, a Burt’s Bees product designer and chemist, why it’s important to change up our skincare routine as it gets colder.
“I get very dry during the wintertime, because we have the heat on in the house, it’s cold outside,” Antwi says. “So extra moisturization is the key for my skincare.”
Snagg, a makeup artist, shares a similar experience. “I mean for me, same, my skin gets really dry in the winter… I get really dry around the mouth, in the cheek area.”
Abena Antwi recommends the Burt’s Bees Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant to counter winter dryness. “This product really helps exfoliate the dead skin without irritating your skin.” Its 10% AHA/BHA/PHA blend exfoliates the skin to reduce the look of uneven pigmentation, including dark spots, pimple marks and blemishes over time. Just make sure to follow with SPF, as AHAs can increase the skin’s sensitivity to the sun. “Once you exfoliate, you have that even skin tone,” says Antwi.
Antwi adds, “It’s also great to prep your skin for moisturizers.” She explains that patchy skin will not absorb the active ingredients as effectively as skin that has been exfoliated properly to give a nice and even surface for moisturizers, and even makeup, to sit on.
Snagg affirms that proper exfoliation helps makeup lay nicely on the skin. “It lays better, absolutely. What exfoliant does, it helps with texture as well,” she says. “So once you’ve got smooth skin, honey, you slap on the makeup and it’s like butter.”
Managing Skincare Routines
Beam asks Snagg and Antwi, who are both mothers, how they are able to find time for themselves—without the guilt.
“I think a lot of us—and when I say us, Black women—we care a lot about the ‘care’ [but] we don’t put ‘self’ in front of it,” Beam says. “With me, what’s going on in my household can stress me out a bit, but both of y’all are mothers. I want to know, how do you guys carve out time for yourself without feeling guilty?”
Snagg, a mother of two, says that she enjoys more time to herself now that her kids are a little more grown. “They’re in their own worlds—one preteen, one teenager—so they have their own stuff going on,” she says. “My daughter is a basketball player, my son does his stuff after school, and they know Mommy works hard.”
Snagg tries to spend a lot of quality time with her kids, so they understand when she needs her own space now and then. “Sometimes I make jokes like, yup, I’m going out and I’m not even going anywhere. I would just stay home and chill—for me personally, rest is more important than sleep.”
Beam asks if being a mother allows enough time to spend on skincare. Snagg says that it does, “but it’s really quick.”
As a mother herself, Antwi can relate. “That’s why having the right products is very important. Because we don’t have the time to sit there and do a whole routine,” she says.
Abena Antwi developed the Burt’s Bees Breakout Defense Foaming Wash and the Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant to work together as a gentle and effective combination to make skincare a breeze for even busy moms.
Antwi recommends cleansing the face with the Breakout Defense Foaming Wash first. Its plant-based BHA from willow bark gently exfoliates pores while rich, foaming surfactants cleanse away excess oil without stripping the skin. Then, she recommends applying the Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant onto clean skin with a reusable cotton round. Unlike many exfoliants that could be harsh to the skin, this Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant is not only gentle to use daily, but it was created in collaboration with a dermatologist who specializes in melanin-rich skin! Antwi recommends completing the routine with a moisturizer and SPF, since AHAs can increase the skin’s sensitivity to the sun.
My Style And Grace
Beam asks the group, “What do you love most about yourself?”
Snagg says it’s her passion for helping her clients. “What I love most about myself is, I have the opportunity to boost my clients’ energy, their confidence,” she says. “That’s my purpose for what I do in my life. It fills me up everyday.”
For Abena Antwi, her self-love stems from developing products that help people achieve healthy skin. “Being able to create products that are going to change people’s lives. It’s personal care, cosmetics—but you don’t think that people really rely on it.”
Antwi recalls her own skincare struggles growing up. “I started breaking out at a young age. So I know the emotional damage that it causes when we have acne and you don’t want to come out.”
Antwi was inspired to create simple and accessible products like the Burt’s Bees Breakout Defense Foaming Wash and Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant to make healthy skin easily attainable.
These products were made to be effective on all skin tones and specifically, the Even Tone Liquid Exfoliant, was created in collaboration with a dermatologist who specializes in melanin-rich skin, making this skincare combination perfect for everyone.
“I want to talk a little bit more about the bottle that you made because it’s for Black women,” Beam tells Antwi. “I don’t think that we are represented enough in these spaces, so I would love to know about your intention with making this.”
“Being in the industry for a long time, you didn’t really see a lot of us sitting at the table and coming out with formulas that were suitable for our skin,” Antwi says.
“And then hyperpigmentation is a big thing for us. To me, these formulas are very personal, because I break out, I get hyper-pigmented, I get all the conditions that this product is going to help [reduce the look of over time],” she adds.
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