The American in me is primed to feel like anything instantly gets glammed up once you slap a French name on it. “Escargot” sounds way more appealing than “snails,” and “merci” seems more refined than “thanks.” So it should probably come as no surprise that I always think of La Roche-Posay as a premium brand, even though it’s widely available in drugstores, and not terribly expensive.

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…

I love Australian Gold Botanical Tinted Face Sunscreen—but recently came to the disappointing realization that double cleansing doesn’t effectively remove it from my face at the end of the day. Specifically, double cleansing with Kose cleansing oil and Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser doesn’t do the trick. How could I tell? If I swiped my (post-double-cleansed) face with a Stridex pad, it came away tinted. Every. Single. Time. And if I lightly scratched the surface of my face, I could…