The Skincare Routine No One Asked For

No one:
Absolutely nobody:
Kendra Stanton Lee: Here are the products that I use to keep my skin clean and supple. They may contain affiliate links, but please let me know if you have questions!

A little background: I have 45 years of experience living in a human body on planet earth. I have rosacea. I have never utilized any facial service that entail needles/injections. I have gotten one facial in my life and I heard doves fluttering and angels weeping—it was so beautiful. When I am not daydreaming about that facial, I am doing the following:

MORNING:
Morning Kendra has limited cognitions and deeply resents having to be vertical before 10 a.m.. She believes she deserves a lifetime achievement award for remembering to take her probiotic each morning. While she has been told a morning cleanse would benefit her, she thinks that sounds aggressive.

1. SPRAY OF ROSE WATER MIST to wake up the skin
This one by Mario Badescu is affordable and gets the job done.

2. VITAMIN C
The “sunshine in a bottle” All Bright Vitamin C Serum by Counter is bar none the best. Comes in a glass bottle to protect the early expiry on this magic potion. This is your anti-oxidant fighter formula. It’s spendy, but I have truly seen a difference in the glowiness of my skin.

3. MOISTURIZER
Don’t skip this step. If you skip this step, you will run into the mother of the boy you had a feverish crush on his high school, and she will report back to him that you were looking a little reptilian when she clocked you in the dog food aisle at Stop n’ Shop. Moisturize. Sometimes I like a carrier blend oil, sometimes I use a basic moisturizer like Counter’s Adaptive Moisture Lotion.

4. SPF
Of course I wear an SPF. My skin turns red if I walk by a styrofoam model of the solar system. I like this Korean brand, Innisfree, which is high-coverage and non-greasy. If you prefer a tinted SPF, Supergoop is sort of the gold standard. I like it, as well.

Skincare is Self-care

And fortunately, mine is simple

EVENING:
Evening Kendra is no more nimble than Morning Kendra. However, she has the presence of mind to know she should put her cleanser on before she goes into the shower. She slathers on a pump of:

1. Lipid Defense Cleansing Oil - it’s thick enough that it gets the makeup off, but gentle enough that it’s not stripping my skin of its natural oils. Works well, smells lovely.

After my shower, I finish with:
2. Paula’s Choice Exfoliator - This is the biggest difference-maker in the bunch. Life before this exfoliator is simply not as baby’s butt smoove. But I only use it a few times a week because hashtag sensitive.

3. Retinaural Advanced Super Serum - gentler than a retinol, I really like the idea of this serum. I am told it’s reparative and will improve the elasticity of my skin. I do what I’m told.

4. Moisturizer, repeat.

5. Hyaluronic Acid - this one by The Ordinary is inexpensive. I know the skincare sages are offended by it, because it’s for the peasants, but it’s worked really nicely for my peasant skin.

These are all my boudoir secrets. I had once hoped to be a woman of great mystique and aloofness. Those dreams are dashed. When I die, though, I’ll have told my story.

Boyz II Men II Grandpas

I saw Boyz II Men perform at the MGM in Boston the other night. Somehow I’m not engaged to any of the Boyz and am in fact still single and driving Uber. I’m just as surprised as you are.

Oh but the show was so good for the soul. I expected it would be, but I could not have imagined how restorative, how actually radical an act going to see a live performance of songs that colored all of my middle and high school years would be. At one point, Shawn Stockman told everyone to turn to the person on their left, and to the other on their right, and to tell them WE’RE GONNA HAVE A GREAT TIME TONIGHT. Which is the opposite of what we were all doing when we were swaying awkwardly at a junior high dance in a dusty gym to “On Bended Knee.” Restoration comes, sometimes three decades later.

The crowd looked like me, and by that I mean everyone in the crowd all once made mixtapes without a sense of irony. They all once called their home answering machine to see if their crush left them a message while they were out at the mall, eating Boardwalk Fries in the food court while their mom tried on shoes at Dillard’s. Or while their sister perused the stickers in Spencer’s Gifts. Or while their friend returned some flannel boxers to the Gap. The venue was filled with a diversity of people of every size, shape, color, and no doubt creed but we were all paying homage to the religion that was Motown Philly in the early 90s, when life wasn’t ruled by cellphone ringtones but rather by smoooooove riddems.

Boyz II Men lost its bass along the way, and I don’t mean they lost him to the grave or anything so dramatic. I just understand he no longer performs with the group. Still, the remaining trio were still strong performers. They were all still in great shape, they danced well, they sounded amazing.

Also, they were so unbelievably dorky. And I loved them for it. Because the songs they were singing were largely syrupy ballads, but they all still held up. They were never singing just about young love and fading crushes. They were always musicians with sophisticated vocal abilities. But the trio also weren’t putting out new songs, or doing new things. They were still trotting out “End of the Road” knowing there were no new roads to begin traveling. They had no ego about who they were, and why they mattered to all these Gen Xers gathered together for such a time as this. At the end of the show, the Boyz just lingered on stage. They didn’t need to sprint off to convince us all they were Tokyo-bound tomorrow morning. They just shook hands and slapped skin with the fans who had kept them crooning all these years.

They owned that this musical canon was their bread and butter and it endeared them to people around the world. I think that’s beautiful. They kept making jokes about everyone in the building needing to sit down, or not having the agility to clap, and how they didn’t have anything better to do for the next 33 years so they might as well do this. They all looked foiiiiine, so, trust, I still don’t know why they played up their elderly status. I also still don’t understand how I went home without at least one BoyzIIMan, but there are still a few weeks until Valentine’s. I’ll be accepting any and all mixtapes with a sprinkle of Boyz’ ballads.

Why I Keep Opening Another Woman's Mail

This last holiday season, I received heaps of mail for another woman. Christmas cards, packages, and other fat, cheery envelopes. This woman was clearly loved, you know? I opened all of it.

I kept the spoils.
I went wild spending the gift cards.
I endorsed every last check to myself. 

I waited for US Weekly to tell my story. “She seemed normal,” the neighbors all agreed. “She kept to herself. None of us knew we were living next door to The Postal Pirate.” 

Piracy is so badass. Alas, it is not the driving conflict in my story, nor is it the stuff of tabloid news. It is much more straightforward: There once was a woman who got divorced. Her friends and family assumed she’d drop her married name. They addressed her mail accordingly. She wondered about this. Then she probably got hungry and ate an entire tray of Rice Krispie treats. The end. 

Denise Richards will never play me on a Lifetime movie. Sally Field will never play my mom. But if she did, the film would be called, “Not Without My Full Name.”

A logical beginning for my story is April of last year. I faced a judge in family court who asked me if I would be keeping my married name after my divorce was finalized. I affirmed that I would be. The judge did not ask my reasons. In the months since, no one, in fact, has. This may be due to the fact that when asked direct, personal questions by people I love and respect, I immediately begin fanning myself and soon after faint on a Victorian chaise, only to recover hours later when someone revives me with fake news that Harry Styles has arrived. 

Nevertheless, I had hoped someone would ask me whether I would be keeping my name. Divorce is a deeply private decision made for deeply personal reasons. But a name is public-facing. We can try to avoid calling people by their first names (as I do at all dog parks and children’s sporting events when I have once again forgotten the names of the handlers and coaches even though we have introduced ourselves over nervous laughter 7 times since last Sunday) but eventually we have to use them. Names are not neutral--just ask Barack Hussein Obama--but they are important and necessary and they shape who we are. They can even help to tell our story. 
I came into the world as Kendra Colleen Stanton. I think my parents did a great job authoring my birth certificate. Each part of my name has a lovely balance of two syllables. Clap. That. Beauty. Out. 

When I married in my early twenties, I wanted to retain my maiden name somehow, while adding my husband’s surname. I did not want to hyphenate my new name. I simply wanted to orbit among other triple threat luminaries: Mary Tyler Moore. Florence Griffith Joyner. Doris Kearns Godwin. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The names of the cast of my personal Mt. Rushmore.

Then! Lo! Hark! Social Security minted me a new name. My maiden became my middle name. My last name became my married name. I became Kendra Stanton Lee. I was excited to adopt this new appellation, with hopes of one day sharing a surname with my would-be children. 

Those children materialized. They are my greatest source of joy and financial strain. I am overjoyed that I can share a name and DNA with them. Further, they are half-Asian. I am their Caucasian mother. Their last name is one of the most common in the world, but derives from proud clan origins in South Korea, from whence their paternal ancestry line hails. After forming those children in my womb from a steady diet of Little Debbie Nutty Bars for the length of several senatorial terms, I wanted an outward emblem that we were related. Sharing this last name, even though I am no longer married to their father, means a great deal to me. 

Further, I have published all of my professional work under Kendra Stanton Lee. I own the web domain to my name, and if you think I am giving that up, you have never emptied your whole piggy bank to buy Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, just because you can. This name has been a professional expression, a byline by which my work identifies me. Additionally, as my full-time hustle is as a teacher, this name connects me to hundreds of current and former students, who now send me LinkedIn requests from all over the world. My students have affectionately shortened my name to “Ms. SL” or sometimes just “SL.” When you become an acronym, you garner street cred. Like my Monopoly real estate, I am not giving that up.  

So it is with a certain bristling that I have received mail where the kindest of friends and family lopped off my last name. I trust they had the best of intentions; they wanted to honor the major life change I had just made to my marital status. Still, I wish that they had asked me, even if it felt a touch awkward or invasive. A simple, “Will you be changing your name now that you are divorced? I just want to know how to address this distribution from your trust fund” would have meant the world to me.

Perhaps this is on me. Maybe I should have issued a royal decree or at least an Instagram post to my loyal fandom to announce this intention to keep my name. In the meantime, I’ll keep cashing those checks for that other woman. Keep the lovemail flowing, fam.