What do you think of when you picture California? When I was a kid in Maryland, I told my classmates that my family was moving to California, and they were in awe. They said that people in California only ate yogurt, so I should prepare myself for a drastic change in my diet. And they told me that the people were all golden tan there. They probably got this information from movies and books—after all, before I moved to the West Coast, I thought that all Californians were like Dawn from The…

Sometimes I marvel at how far humans have come from the days of putting leeches on our skin as a form of medicine. I feel so lucky to live in a world that offers many types of sunscreen—not just chemical and physical, but also tinted sunscreen and even sunscreen that’s designed to provide a cooling sensation. The latest innovation I spotted in the drugstore was “dry” sunscreen—not “dry” in the sense that it’s actually a powder, but sunscreen that doesn’t…

I still remember the first time I heard about AmorePacific. I was at Sephora with my sister, and a store representative was gushing about a new brand that was centered on natural ingredients, particularly bamboo sap. I remember making a joke in my head about pandas, but I never actually tried anything from the brand because it was pretty expensive. I don’t normally buy premium skincare products because I can’t seem to justify the expense on something that may or may not work. But I…