The only moisturizer I care about
Plus a good book for heartbreak, Hunter Schafer's blush, and lip liners.
I usually kinda hate the month of March, because it teases the arrival of spring without actually delivering it. You’ll experience a few nice days— sit in the park and think “life is worth living!”— then suddenly be punished with a final snow, which can send an entire hopeful community over the edge. But now that I live in Los Angeles (I used to hiss and scowl at people who started sentences like that out of jealousy), I kinda love March—flowers are blooming and there are a few rainy days sprinkled throughout; enough to make me feel the seasonal shift, but not too many to send me into a depressive spiral. I have, for the record, decided that two days of rain in a row is my maximum.
This is my first month feeling like I really live in Los Angeles: I have a car, an apartment (I’m no longer living in my teenage bedroom!), a library card, and the barista at my coffee place remembers my name. I feel, for the most part, settled; which means I’ve spent less time power-walking around Ikea and bargaining with strangers on Facebook Marketplace, and more time reading, using, and wearing things I love.
I know it’s not necessarily the exact end or beginning of the month, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s my newsletter so I make the rules. So for this week, I thought I’d do a little round of up of all of the things I’ve been really loving lately.
A book to get you through heartbreak
Recently, one of my best friends was really going through it. It wasn’t a long-term relationship breakup, but she’d been seeing a guy for a few months and it had been going well. Or so she thought, until he randomly decided to disappear off of the face of the planet. Their last text exchange was a correspondence about an upcoming dinner date and then..gone!
I suggested that he had maybe dropped dead, but when I logged into my finsta to stalk on her behalf, I was mortified to discover he had posted a photo at a restaurant in her neighborhood three hours prior. I went over to hers and held her while she wept. She wasn’t crying about him necessarily (Because ew what the fuck! He’s a 36 year old man. Grow up, freak!), but more so about how humiliating and devastating dating in 2025 feels.
Social media and the apps make portraying modern dating painfully cringey. It’s hard to truly capture just how soul-sucking the game-ification of swiping is, the Love Is Blind-style whiplash of matching a face to the person you’ve been texting, and how extra meaningful real, in-person connections feel when they finally happen. I’d never really read anything that felt true to the experiences of my friends (most of which are single, by the way, so let me know if you know anyone nice.) That is, until I received a galley of Shon Faye’s Love In Exile. The book starts out with a raw and unflinching description of what heartbreak feels like, where she describes writhing around and howling into her pillow in agony. Throughout the rest of the book, Faye goes on to explore the illusion of love we’ve all be sold; she pulls apart romantic expectations and lust, dissects parental love and sexuality, and even talks about how Lana Del Rey saved her life. When you’re heartbroken, it’s difficult to imagine anyone has ever felt as bad as you feel in that moment. But this book is here to show you the total universality of anxiety and disappointment around love.
This book comes out in May, but as a published author myself, please understand that pre-ordering is one of the most important things you can do to support writers. This book is so damn special, you will not regret pre-ordering it.
The longest lasting lip liner
Put your pitchforks down! I’m staying true to my word when I say I’m no longer covering “viral” TikTok beauty products. In fact, does anyone else kind of feel like societally we’ve been able to loosen the TikTok chokehold a bit? Or is it just me?
Anyways, yes, this product went viral on TikTok a few months ago, blah blah blah. However, afters months had passed, I couldn’t help but notice that still, every single beauty editor and makeup-obsessed person I know had this product. And when I asked them about it, some have even shared that this is their second or third tube. According to my personal criteria, this means it qualifies as a genuinely viral product—not just TikTok viral. And it make sense why: it’s really, really good. If you’ve never tried it before it’s basically a lip liner stain that you apply, wait a couple of minutes, and then peel off. It's leaves behind this soft tint where you’ve placed it, and it truly stays put all day long. Even after gulping down a drink and eating a full meal, you’ll still have some on your lips, which is certainly more than I can say for most lip liners in my arsenal. I will say, it does require a bit of cleaning up so that the liners don’t look too harsh (I’ve used makeup wipes or just toilet paper, depending on how blurry I want to get it), but the effects will also vary depending on how long you leave it on before peeling off.
Moisturizer for the dry & acne prone
Generally speaking, when it comes to skincare, I’m a believer that you can find anything you need for under $30, especially now that K-beauty has become so accessible stateside. However, moisturizers have always been the one skincare product that’s tested that’s kinda tested that theory...at least for my skin. If a moisturizer is too heavy, it breaks me out, and if it’s too thin, my skin feels dry as a bone.
I’ve been a client of Sofie’s for so long I now fully consider her a friend. And it’s because I’ve spent so much time talking with her about skincare over the years, that I’m aware of how much she takes the (often forgotten!) dry-and-acne-prone skin types into consideration when she makes products. But this moisturizer is kind of on a whole other level. If you have ultra dry skin, but you also tend to break out at the drop a hat, I hate to break it to you but you have to give this moisturizer a try. Maybe not now (if it’s not in this month’s budget!), but eventually. Because you won’t regret it. It’s so rich and luxurious and just…perfection.
A makeup look living rent free in my head
We were all just supposed to see this photo of Hunter Schafer at the Film and Independent Spirit Awards and...move on? Her hair’s perfect, lived-in blonde, her makeup exuding such warmth, it’ll make you leave your sweater at home, and of course, the yellow floral Prada slip dress. Sigh.
Whenever I apply blush, my hope is that it’ll make my skin look the way it does when I’ve just left the beach: sunkissed and flushed, like I’ve been lying in the sand all day without a care in the world. But even when I apply it in the same spots the sun would naturally hit my face—in that W-shape across your cheeks and nose—it just never looks as good. I guess it always still looks a little faux. So when I saw this on my Instagram feed, I put my phone down and shut my eyes. “Finally,” I thought. “The perfect sun-kissed, summery reference.”
After a bit of sleuthing, I learned that Hunter’s makeup artist, Sandy Ganzer, used Saie’s baked powder blush in “Ciao.” It’s this golden-bronzey-burnt-peachy shade that I would have never in a million years picked for myself, but I cannot stop using it. It adds this warm, fresh, natural flush to your cheeks, and it also has this sheen to it that adds this extra glow to your skin. I always think that cream looks more natural and flattering on the skin, but I’ve learned that sometimes cream blushes can settle in my creases and pores a bit more. A good powder blush can add this blurring effect that’s so pretty.
It’s rainy and then it’s sunny playlist
If you’re wondering what I’m listening to when I’m driving around, running errands on a gloomy morning (maybe there’s a light rain shower or something) that eventually clears up and turns into a sunny afternoon.
This post has single-handedly gotten me to care about this saie blush launch
So phee, plus vitte ? 🤔 🙄🤗