I Don’t Care If You’re 45, 55, 65 or 85. I Want Your Skin to Look Damn Good.

There is this weird idea in aesthetics that everyone is supposed to be chasing 25. I’m not. If you are 55, I want your skin to look incredible at 55. If you are 65, I want it healthy, hydrated, strong and glowing at 65. If you are 75 or 85, I am not going to look at your face like aging itself is a problem we need to fix. You are allowed to look your age. You are also allowed to look really damn good doing it.

This is where I think the beauty industry has messed with our heads a little. Wrinkles happen. Skin gets thinner. Collagen production slows. Cell turnover changes. Oil production may decrease. Hormonal changes can affect hydration and elasticity. Years of sun exposure may finally start showing up as uneven pigment and texture. None of that means your skin has failed. It means you have been alive for a while. My job is not to punish your face for that. My job is to look at what your skin needs now, because what worked beautifully when you were 25 may be completely wrong for you at 55.

I love corrective skincare. I love microneedling. I love chemical peels. I love seeing texture improve and watching someone’s skin become brighter and healthier. But I am not going to pretend that a facial is going to erase every expression line you have collected over several decades, nor do I think it needs to. Sometimes the biggest improvement is not removing every wrinkle. It is improving the texture around them, getting dull skin glowing again, softening roughness, improving uneven pigment and getting chronically dry skin comfortable again. Sometimes the skin looks healthier enough that the lines suddenly stop being the first thing you notice. That can make a HUGE difference without trying to make your face look twenty years younger.

As skin changes, I care more and more about how well it is functioning. Does it hold onto moisture? Is the barrier healthy? Does it become irritated easily? Has it become noticeably thinner? Are you using three different acids because TikTok told you to? Are you using a retinoid every night even though your face is constantly burning? There comes a point where throwing more aggressive products at aging skin stops being corrective and starts being abuse. You cannot exfoliate yourself back to 25. If your skin is red, tight, flaky and irritated all the time, I do not care how expensive your anti-aging routine is. It is not working for you.

This surprises people. They come in expecting me to recommend the strongest peel, the deepest microneedling and twelve different products. Sometimes I want to do the opposite. A gentle cleanser. A really good moisturizer. A retinoid used appropriately if your skin tolerates it. Antioxidants. Something that addresses pigment if that is one of your concerns. And sunscreen. Always sunscreen. Then we add treatments strategically instead of treating your face like we are sanding an old piece of furniture. Your skin is still living tissue. Be nice to it.

Aging naturally does not mean giving up and doing nothing. Not even close. Microneedling can be a beautiful option when I want to encourage collagen remodeling and improve things like texture, fine lines and certain scars. Chemical peels can help with dullness, uneven tone, sun damage and texture depending on the peel and the person. Customized facials can support hydration, barrier health and overall skin quality. Sometimes combining different treatments over time makes much more sense than expecting one appointment to accomplish everything. The important part is that I am treating the skin you have now, not the skin you had twenty years ago and not the skin some advertisement thinks you are supposed to want.

This is another place where I think honesty matters. Skin treatments work on skin. They can improve its quality tremendously. But your face also changes underneath the skin as you age. Fat distribution changes. Bone structure changes. Facial volume changes. Gravity continues being extremely committed to its job. A facial cannot replace lost facial volume. A chemical peel cannot lift everything back to where it was at 30. Microneedling cannot reproduce the structural changes of surgery. That does not make those treatments useless. It means I am not going to sell you a skincare treatment while pretending it can do something it physically cannot do. I would rather tell you what we CAN improve beautifully.

We spend years putting everything on our faces and forgetting that our neck, chest and hands have been attending all the same birthdays. Then suddenly we notice them. These areas can show sun exposure, thinning skin, pigment and texture changes too. So when we talk about aging skin, I do not necessarily stop at your jawline. Depending on the treatment, we may need to think about those areas too. And whatever skincare routine you are using on your face, at the very least start thinking about bringing some of that care downward. Your neck did nothing to deserve being abandoned.

SPF may be the least exciting part of anti-aging, but it is probably one of the most important

I know. Again with the sunscreen. But if you are spending money trying to improve sun damage, pigment, texture and collagen while continuing to accumulate unnecessary UV exposure, we are making this harder than it needs to be. I grew up in the same generation that thought tanning was gorgeous. We have already discussed our baby oil crimes. We know better now. You do not have to become a vampire. Just protect the progress you are paying for.

Maybe at 45 your biggest concern is old acne scars. At 55 it becomes pigment and fine lines. At 65 you suddenly care more about dryness and texture. At 75 you want your skin to feel comfortable and look brighter. At 85 maybe you simply want to continue taking care of yourself because you enjoy it. All of those are valid reasons to be in my treatment room. There is no age where I look at someone and think, “Well, I guess we are done caring about your skin now.” Absolutely not.

There is a difference between wanting to care for yourself and feeling like every new line is an emergency. I do not want to contribute to that. You are going to age. So am I. And I have every intention of taking excellent care of my skin while I do it. I want the same for my patients. We can protect collagen. We can improve texture. We can work on pigmentation. We can support hydration. We can make thoughtful choices about treatments and homecare. We can absolutely try to make your skin look better next year than it does today. None of that requires pretending you are supposed to look 25 forever. If you are looking for help with aging skin, fine lines, sun damage, texture or just want your skin to look better in Bentonville, that is how I approach it at Skin Therapy with Marissa in Bentonville. I do not care if you are 45, 55, 65, 75 or 85. I am not trying to erase your age. I want you to look in the mirror and think, Damn. My skin looks good.