Confessions of a Korean Skincare Addict

Last weekend, I met up with my friend from college in Senayan. She arrived there earlier because she wanted to window shop at Innisfree, the number one beauty brand in South Korea. I waited at a cafe nearby. When I saw her entering the cafe, she had large shopping bags in hand.

“Please don’t judge me!” she said before I could even say hello. “I was planning to only buy a mud mask and face serum, but I just couldn’t handle myself.”

I completely understood her. I mean, I’m obsessed with Korean skincare myself. And it’s not just because I’m a huge K-pop fan, I swear.

It all started in 2013 when I started having breakouts and red blotchy spots on my face. I tried every popular skincare product I could find in stores, yet, nothing worked. Frustrated, I went online to search for answers on beauty blogs (YouTube vlogs and Instagram weren’t as popular back then), and that's where I first heard about the "10 Steps."

My budding obsession with Korean skincare products was manageable back then, I think. Out of the 10 steps, I would only do five or six. My skin did get better, although it’s nowhere near as flawless as the Korean girls you see on those K-dramas.

After a while, those five-to-six step routines just weren’t cutting it anymore. Somehow, my skin had grown weaker and more sensitive. The answer? More products. So now every morning (and every night), I put these things on my face, in order:

1. Cleansing Oil/Tissue
2. Facial Foam
3. Toner
4. Essence
5. Hydrating lotion
6. Serum
7. Eye serum
8. Moisturizer
9. Lip mask
10. Sleeping mask

And when even these aren’t enough, I’ll throw in a facial peel, then anti-acne cream, and then a face serum. It’s too much, I know. But what else can I do? I love it. I feel like I’m missing something if I don’t do my daily treatments. I really have to do it. And while my face isn’t as flawless as Song Hye Kyo's is, at least I don't have pimples anymore.

How much did I spend on this skin? Well, a lot. If I don’t keep a close eye on my spending, I can drop more than Rp 2 million ($145 USD) a month just for skincare. But what can I say? Not everyone is genetically blessed with naturally flawless skin. I have to work hard for mine. And there are other men and women whose skincare habits are even more intense (and costly) than my own.

Like Puti, for example. She works at a leading insurance company and she told me that she spends twice as much as I do on skincare per month. “I can’t even count how many steps I do," she said. "It’s like a ritual. It takes hours to do it. I think I’m obsessed.”

I reached out to a beautician just to make sure I’m not over doing it. I was expecting her to say, no way! Of course my routine is totally, umm… routine. But instead, she laughed out loud and told me that I absolutely am taking this whole skincare regiment way too far.

Dr. Nenden owns South Jakarta's N'Clinique and she told me that while there is nothing wrong with doing facial treatment, we still need to make sure we're not actually damaging our skin with over-zealous 10 Steps routines.

“We have to understand what's in those products,” she explained. “We have to be careful with dangerous chemicals like parabens, or those that need to be prescribed by doctors. We also have to be very careful with hydroquinone so we don’t overdose on it.”

Dr. Nenden thinks that there’s nothing wrong with Korean skincare, and she’s really familiar with it, since Korean cosmetics companies have tried asking her to promote their products to her clients. But she thinks the benefits are still a bit unclear. If anything, this trend is more likely to be a gimmick than a real thing.

“Skincare doesn’t have to be so multilayered,” she said. “Why don’t you use one product that has similar benefits?”

She told me that a company once tried to get her to sell a 4-step haircare treatment. "I told them, ‘Why do we have to four different products if the shampoo is already enough?’”

It's the same with skincare products, she said. Companies want to make you believe that you need so many more products than before because it makes you buy more of their products. If you're in the skincare industry, do you want people buying one bottle that does it all, or 10 that (maybe) do it a bit better?

But the thing is all this 10 Steps marketing is actually working. The export of Korean skincare products has increased 10-fold since 2010 and the Korean beauty industry is engaging with Instagram influencers to push new beauty trends at such a fast pace that we can't keep up.

I swear that by the time I finally figured out what the hell “honey skin” was, “glass skin” and “cloudless skin” were already making headlines.

Thankfully, Dr. Nenden was able to talk me down from my Korean skincare mania. She reminded me that the standards of beauty pushed by the Korean beauty industry aren't attainable for everyone, regardless of how much you spend on products or how many steps you go through before finally falling asleep.

Especially in Indonesia. We live in a totally different environment than South Korea. For one, South Korea's climate is drier, longer. That means that people in South Korea need to do a lot more to keep their skin moisturized than we do down here in the humid as fuck tropics.

And remember, over-moisturizing is just as bad for you as under-moisturizing.

“You should make sure the treatment products fit your skin type," Dr. Nenden said.

Maybe she's right. Maybe we're all just victims of cosmetic company's marketing campaigns. But some of us just can't bear to late go of all those products crowding our dressing room tables. Like me. I don't splurge on new clothes or fancy dinners. I spent my income on skincare products, and I don't see myself giving them up anytime soon.

There is a saying, “Then love is sin and let me sinful be.” My obsession may not give me glassy K-pop skin. But not doing it definitely won't. And that's enough for me.