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Around seven years ago, a makeup artist friend of mine gave me Fresh’s Brown Sugar Body Polish as a Christmas gift. “This stuff costs $70!” she said. “How stupid!” I retorted. Luxury beauty products seemed ridiculous to me. What did they have that the products at Walgreens didn’t? Loot for the foolish with padded pockets, I thought.
I tried it one night when I was bored. I coated my arms and legs and found that it was both exfoliating and moisturizing at the same time (which makes no sense, but is all you could ever ask for.) It felt like I was slipping on leather.
Normally in the winter, you can practically hear me enter a room — that’s how dry and cracked my skin gets. But that changed with this scrub; all I had to do was slather it on in the shower, lightly rinse off, and emerge ready for the day.
I used an entire container that winter, and when it was gone, I mourned it. I couldn’t bring myself to buy another with my own cash. So for the last few years, I’ve bought every drugstore oil and cream on the shelves, certain that something would save me the way I had once been saved.
There have been, in total, six winters between now and when I blew through that first jar. But recently, I began to think that I’m now old and wise enough to do the right thing: Just buy it for myself and be done with it. But as it turns out, if you complain long and hard enough and wake up screaming in the night to scratch your itchy skin, you just may inadvertently convince your significant other to plop down a little cash for luxury. This Christmas, I received a present of not just one jar, but two.