Product Review: Philosophy The Microdelivery Exfoliating Wash
By Glinda
I have this thing about exfoliating.
I’m sort of obsessive about it. I just sort of love the idea that I am scrubbing away dead skin cells.
Yes, it is a personal problem, but it doesn’t hurt anybody, so I just roll with it. In fact, I cried when L’Occitane had the gall to discontinue my most favorite exfoliating soap EVER.
So when I saw this facial cleansing product from philosophy, I decided to give it a go. It said it was designed for daily use, so all the better in my mind. A thirty second mini peel sounded right up my alley.
There is no doubt that exfoliation occurs when using this product. Whatever they use as the exfoliating “beads” fall somewhere in between gentle and a teensy bit harsh. I suppose it depends on how much pressure you use.
One tip for those with contacts, I found out the hard way that rinsing properly is VERY important. Do not rinse off in a rush, else you will find yourself with little beads embedded temporarily in your eyeballs. Yes, it was as pleasant as it sounds.
As with any new product, and especially an exfoliating one, I expected some inital breakouts. Breakouts did indeed occur, but I thought they would be temporary and go away once my skin got acclimated.
Except, it never did.
I had annoying, icky breakouts for a month, my friends. I kept hoping it would get better, because other than that one side effect, I liked the product. It made my skin soft and smooth and reduced my pores nicely.
Then I stopped kidding myself that the breakouts would go away and resigned myself to the fact that my skin does not react well to this product.
But for those of you who love taking off that top layer of skin as much as I do, this product might be worth a try.
April 22nd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
I too am enamored of exfoliation. I use this stuff every day and have never had breakout problems. I am often guilty of grass is greener syndrome when it comes to beauty products and keep switching things around to see if there’s something better out there but this is one of a very short list of products that I’ve been using for years and will buy crates of if it ever goes away.
April 22nd, 2011 at 5:30 pm
I too am a fan of exfoliation, though mainly due to a skin condition.
I use Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant every other day. I find it very gentle, yet effective, and haven’t had any breakout issues.
April 22nd, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I actually can’t use anything with microbeads. Whenever I use them I get these little cysts all over my face, which are most probably the beads themselves embedding in my pores. I don’t have particularly large poors which makes this all the stranger. I stick to products with some kind of larger abrasive. When I was in high school I used the St. Ives apricot scrub because the walnut particles were large enough to be no problem. These days I use the vibrating abrasive pad thing Neutrogena makes, and it keeps me nice and smooth.
April 22nd, 2011 at 8:12 pm
I use the St. Ives Apricot Scrub and haven’t remarked any problems unless I forget to use it for a while. My pores are a bit large, and I haven’t actually tried anything else.
However, I’ll keep an eye out for this one…
April 24th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Love using an exfoliant. I used this product in the past. Had the same problem with breakouts. In my case, they were small red bumps that I mistakenly thought was the skin purging itself. Well either my skin has a purging problem, or it was the product not syncing with my skin. Once I stopped those li’l buggers magically disappeared.
I use the Dermalogica Exfoliant (waves to jojo.k) and no problems whatsoever…love it.