Gatsby is a Japanese-based brand that makes hair gels, shave gels, and other men’s grooming products. When I heard about this brand in the past, I always wondered it if was indeed an ode to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, The Great Gatsby. It turns out that it really is: read the company’s about page to read the full story, but basically, Gatsby’s founder was inspired by the lifestyle of the novel’s title character.

My mom enjoys Korean dramas, Sudoku puzzles, and extracting blackheads. That’s right, those annoying little black dots that appear when your pores get clogged but stay open. When I was a teenager, I had acne on my back (“bacne”), so my mom used to beg me to let her squeeze out my blackheads. She was excited for me when I got into college, she was happy when I made her favorite scones, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more delighted than when I grudgingly agreed…

What makes a skincare product label effective? I think we’ve all come to expect that skincare products will try to sway us with pretty pictures and uplifting words like “brightening” and “soothing.” But it was only recently that I thought to question what it actually means for a skincare product to be “clinically proven.” I see this from time to time on certain labels, and I always thought that it referred to actual clinical trials. But it turns out that…