Author: Jack Ward

The absence of fluorescent glare is the first thing you notice about the better clinics. The lighting has been considered. Talk first, treat later is a small choice that turns out to matter more than most price lists suggest. There is a chair that isn’t the treatment bed, a place to sit and talk before anyone touches your face. Anxiety about skincare is real, but it doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It manifests as an appointment that is canceled, a question that is never asked, or a patient who makes a reservation and then silently vanishes. For…

A few years ago, a man might have lowered his voice to confess that he had a standing laser appointment. He now texts the address of the clinic to his friends. Almost everything about the direction of things can be inferred from that slight shift in tone. When you walk into a medspa on a weekday morning, you’ll notice that the waiting area has changed. A young man is scrolling through videos of someone shaving their own back, an older man is leafing through a magazine, and a man in cycling gear is checking his phone. No one appears ashamed.…

Dolly Parton has consistently brought a certain level of candor to discussions about her face for many years. You begin to notice that she never really modifies her tone when you watch old clips of her on Larry King in 2003, Howard Stern years later, and sitting across from Ray Martin on 60 Minutes Australia last year. The line about something sagging or dragging, the shrug, and the laugh are all the same. When the subject is brought up, most celebrities become tense. Dolly appears to bend closer. Many people forget that she didn’t touch her face until she was…

Not too long ago, Justin Theroux’s entire appeal was that he appeared to be a man who didn’t give a damn about his appearance. Leather jacket, slightly frowning, tattooed on a Tuesday. The contrast between Jennifer Aniston’s California glow and his New York counterpoint was crucial. It’s odd to notice that the man staring back from the screen appears softer, smoother, and somehow newer when viewing the most recent round of red carpet pictures. Depending on who you ask, that may or may not be a compliment. The rumors didn’t appear all at once. Before Allure finally said the quiet…

The post-wax glow seemed to be the main attraction at one point. The skin on your legs or upper lip suddenly appeared to belong to someone with a better morning routine, and you would leave the salon feeling a little raw and a little proud when you saw your reflection in storefront windows. For years, the whole return on investment was that one or two hours of arrogance. However, the shine stopped working for me at some point. Maybe I just got older. It’s also possible that I began to notice what followed. The glow’s short memory is something that…

Most women experience an odd moment at some point, usually around eleven o’clock at night in a brightly lit bathroom. The retinol you’ve been using for months, the one that finally made your skin look like it belonged to someone who slept for eight hours, is suddenly stinging as you stand in front of the mirror. Even burning. A collection of deep, painful bumps develops along the jaw three days later. The routine remained the same. The skin did. If you take the time to look at the calendar, it usually explains why. Although it took some time for the…

When I was thirteen, I was locked in my parents’ bathroom, the door wedged shut by a wicker hamper, and I shaved my arms for the first time. I was surprised by how heavy my father’s razor was. The hair floated in the sink water like a corpse after falling off in long, soft strips. The skin underneath seemed strange to me, almost too pink, like an animal that had lost its coat. I gave everything two rinses. I returned the razor to its original location. Then, for two weeks in May, I wore long sleeves to school in the…

There was a subtle scent of something between clean laundry and cucumber in the room. In the corner, a tiny lamp hummed. After asking me to lie back, the esthetician—a composed woman with short nails and the slightly preoccupied demeanor of someone who has worked on a thousand faces—tilted the chair until the ceiling tiles became blurry. I realized I had been holding onto the armrests at that precise moment, before any gadget came into contact with my skin. Usually, strangers don’t get this close. The HydraFacial is marketed as a glowing procedure. These days, the marketing is everywhere: the…

The mirror begins to tell a different story at about 31. The memory of last Tuesday’s deadline suddenly resides in the skin that recovered from a glass of wine and four hours of sleep in your twenties. Last spring, a friend of mine, a lawyer in Lahore who claims she never looked at her face, texted me a picture and asked why, even after a long weekend, her cheeks appeared exhausted. It wasn’t fatigue. She was in her thirties, and she arrived quietly, as they usually do. Speaking with women in this decade gives the impression that no one has…

Nowadays, most mid-sized cities have a small clinic on a side street where someone is discreetly going through the costly and time-consuming process of removing a chapter from their body. The clinic has a frosted glass door and a single chair in the waiting area. They are given a numbing cream by the receptionist. With a genuinely interested tone, the technician inquires about their well-being. Additionally, something that has nothing to do with the ink changes between the third and fourth sessions. This aspect is rarely discussed in the tattoo industry. More and more removal clinics do. The conversations taking…