These days, my anxiety kicks in just by trying to choose a face wash brand. After all, there’s so many options, so many brands, each one offering—promising—to deliver a brighter, more even skin tone. Or, better yet, get rid of excess oil that causes unsightly blemishes on your already unsightly face. Unsightly because you’ll never have enough money to make it look as though you’ve put on an Instagram or TikTok filter in real life. You know, the way the Kardashians and Jenners do. And these, in the end, are the people everyone—every woman—wants to be like, no? The height of aspirational goals. Even though one would have thought they might have been usurped by now since the cycle of influence in celebrity culture doesn’t usually last for longer than a decade. Especially with attention spans being what they are (or rather, aren’t) nowadays. 

But somehow, this “look,” if that’s what one wanted to call styling yourself in the vein of a stuffed (and browned) plastic turkey, had endured. And with it, the notion that everybody must subscribe to this so-called ideal. These too-often-touted “aesthetics.” So yeah, I was having difficulty choosing a face wash brand. Because each one that I tried to envision myself using would somehow end up disappointing me. If I chose, CeraVe, I pictured that the texture would be all wrong and that my mind would invariably wander to Michael Cera every morning and night, and who really wanted that unless we were still existing in a time circa 2007-2010? (Though, Jesus Christ, how I do still wish we were in that era, financial crisis be damned.) 

Then I went on to the next suggestion: Neutrogena. The thought of using this brand, too, didn’t sit right with me. Because I knew all I would still keep flashing to were images of those various spokeswomen (some famous, some not) for it in the early 2000s splashing their faces with water so that the water sprayed everywhere—as if that wasn’t extremely problematic. As though you wouldn’t, as a potential “consumer,” be plagued with the idea that, sooner or later, that girl who looked so happy and carefree splashing her sink water everywhere would have to clean up. Would have to pay the piper for all that “fun” she indulged in. Though, of course, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that this was the type of girl who also could somehow finagle maid service. 

Even so, I associated Neutrogena not with a liberated face-washing time, but with “mess,” plain and simple. So what else was there? Aveeno? No, it was too overpriced for what it was, and I know damn well that Jennifer Aniston doesn’t really use it. Cetaphil? Na. It sounded too clinical, like a prescription. I also didn’t like the blue-green-white color scheme on the label. La Roche-Posay? Too out of my price range. Too “sophisticated” for someone as far away from France as myself. In fact, looking at all these different varietals of face washes made me want to get even farther away. Like, if I retreated into the remote woods and never needed to see anyone except the various “creatures of the forest,” then it wouldn’t matter about choosing the “best” face wash because having the “best” face would be irrelevant in a milieu where there was no other human being around to judge it. That, most definitely, would have to take away all remaining traces of my face wash abulia. 

And if you’re wondering what abulia means, in a nutshell, it’s “an abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions.” Though some have tried to label it as a psychological disorder, of sorts, billing it as “an absence of willpower or an inability to act decisively, as a symptom of mental illness.” But really, if such a trait is a symptom of mental illness, then everyone on this fucking planet is insane. Or, at least, those with even a modicum of purchasing power who are constantly bombarded with a glut of choice that ends up making them cower in a corner like one of Pavlov’s learned helplessness dogs. But, of course, you probably already knew I was only referring to people with purchasing power, since we all know those without it don’t count as “real” people on this Bezos-run planet. Because, yes, that’s where I’m trying to select my face wash from: Amazon. I know it’s wrong, that I, as a person, am fundamentally wrong. But I console myself by reminding that at least I’ve never bought anything from Shein. Surely, in this day and age, that’s got to count for something. 

After about another hour of existential perusing, I decide, as I always knew I would, to just put the “cheapest shit” into my basket. Which happens to be a two-pack of Clean & Clear. Because of my fascination with which corporate overlords own what, I’m already aware that, long before Johnson & Johnson owned the brand, Revlon was its progenitor. Maybe it was “classier” then. A little less prone to having suspicious, potentially body-damaging effects. Maybe when Clean & Clear was in its earliest infancy under Revlon, it didn’t contain any microbeads.

The very microbeads I will soon be applying to my face and then washing down the drain so that it ends up in various forms of erstwhile natural water, like lakes, rivers and oceans. All so that I can tell myself that I’m doing everything within my power to look “my best,” therefore to be the type of person worthy of becoming a “member of society.” Someone worth something, simply because I appear clean, well-groomed, not too old-looking. I have attended to the nuances of my appearance and that is the most important thing that someone with purchasing power can do. A tacit rule of being able to participate in society. To be taken seriously by those who are so laughable. 

When the package arrives, mere hours later (because it was eligible for same-day delivery), I take advantage of using the nighttime face wash (dubbed “Night Relaxing”) from the two-pack. And as I wash, building up a respectable lather but not overly scrubbing my delicate skin, I think about the brand’s tagline: “Clean & Clear and under control.” I remember it being said so many times in their various ads. There was even an ad for “deep-action cleansing wipes” that starred an uncredited Michelle Monaghan in 2001 (I swear it’s her, though there’s no indication of her “star turn” documented anywhere on the internet). I repeat the mantra to myself in the mirror now. Even though I have never felt less in control of anything in my entire life. Not even which face wash brand I’m “choosing.”