Taking Care-Atin: My Self-Grooming Routine

Shel Raphen -

After my writing on Men and Personal Grooming, I had a lot of people ask me for a guide to personal grooming. However, I am absolutely not a dermatologist or a cosmetologist or a beautician or a beauty scientist or a beauty guru and I'm definitely not qualified to teach you what you should do for your body. But I am a librarian, so I figured what I can do is help connect people with the right resources to learn what to do for their own body.

The format I'm going to use is I'm going to go over my own grooming routines and then break it down into why I do each step and what resources you can use to learn to figure out what makes sense for your body. Grooming exists on a spectrum and you can do a little bit or a lot. A little goes a long way, and just doing what you can will be worth it even if you can't manage to do everything that I do. I don't even do all of this 100% consistently. I think most cishet women probably do even more than I do. I'll try to comment how important I think certain steps are here and there.

I'll also go over what products I use because "the brands and options are overwhelming to me" was something a lot of people mentioned. But I want to emphasize that the brands I use often come down to my own personal preference and what was easily available to me in a nearby store and within my budget, and they are not necessarily the best brands.

Most of the grooming tasks I'll focus on most involve parts of your body that are made of keratin, thus the pun in the title. All keratin-based parts of your body need to be given love and attention to be super pretty and not get problems that cause you pain. All keratin-based parts of your body will differ person to person. But the general principal for everything keratin based is: If you never wash it, it'll get all gunked up, oily, and gross. When you wash it, you strip the oils and make it dry and itchy, so you need to moisturize it afterwards every time and avoid over-washing. Dry shit gets irritated, flaky, red, itchy, and painful.

I know a lot of ADHD people struggle with routines. I am autistic and love routines and find that all of these steps help me a lot with my sensory issues. I usually don't forget any steps because until I do that particular step I am having a bad sensory time which is resolved by doing that step in the routine.

My Grooming Routines

I'm going to break things down to very detailed steps because this is primarily to help other neurodivergent people and legitimately some people might not know how to do these things correctly based on what kind of parenting they got.

Morning

  • Wake up
  • Take meds
  • Comb hair
    • I use a wide-toothed comb.
    • I have long hair that tends to get tangled in my sleep. I start at the ends (bottom) where my hair is most tangled and gently detangle them using my comb, then work my way upwards as each part is detangled, ultimately only doing one or two comb-throughs on each part of my hair that's totally from root to ends. You're just more likely to pull out hair or cause pain if you're always starting at the roots.
  • Pee and do duolingo on the toilet
  • Apply deodorant to armpits
  • Brush teeth
    • Apply toothpaste to toothbrush
    • Wet toothbrush a little
    • Brush all over my teeth making sure to get the fronts and backs and spending a decent amount of time on each group of teeth.
    • Scrub/scrape my tongue with the back of my toothbrush.
    • Rinse my mouth with water or mouthwash that I spit out.
  • Facial skin care
    • Wipe down face with a soft wash cloth.
    • Dry face gently.
    • Apply sun lotion (I use a combination facial lotion and sun screen so this is one step for me.)
  • I have an autoimmune condition which, among other things, causes some weird skin plaques that require topical steroids, so I apply those at this time.
  • Hand and Nail Care
    • Apply nail oil to cuticles, nail bed, and under-nails
    • Apply hand cream to hands. I use shea butter because I have dyshidrotic eczema.
  • I'm considering starting to apply lotion to my shoulders, arms, and butt in the mornings too. Currently I only do this in the evening.
  • Get dressed.

This routine generally takes me about 10-20 minutes in total, depending on how fast I move and mostly like, how long I spend on the toilet doing duolingo.

Evening

My nightly routine is very tied into the fact that I have had GRS and dilate nightly.

  • Dilate :) Not gonna get into the details here but the important thing is I get covered in lube cuz of it and that's why I shower at night.
  • Shower
    • If it's not a hair washing day, I will put my hair in a shower cap to protect it.
    • I wash my hair with shampoo 1-3 times a week. This will vary person to person but pretty much nobody should be shampooing their hair daily. When shampooing, I focus more on my roots than my ends.
    • After washing hair, I always put hair conditioner in it, focusing more on the ends than the roots, and leave it in for the rest of my shower.
    • I don't do a full scrub-down of my entire body every time I shower because I have dry skin. I always wash my armpits, shoulders, underboob, torso, crotch-area, lower back, and butt-area. Maybe every other day I'll also wash my arms and legs. To be honest, this is an area where I am personally inconsistent due to autism and fatigue.
    • I use gentle eczema-friendly bar soap, because loofahs are bacteria-incubators and not using a washcloth reduces the chores I need to do. A washcloth and liquid soap work too if you're up to washing your washcloths regularly.
    • I rinse all the soap off my body.
    • I rinse out the hair conditioner at the end.
  • Post-shower hair care
    • If it's an evening shower, which it usually is, I'll squeeze the water out of my hair (not wring! gentle squeezing), wrap my hair in a microfiber hair towel for roughly 30-60 minutes, comb my hair, and then braid my hair before I sleep to prevent bedhead.
    • If it's a morning shower (usually only before special occasions) I'll gently squeeze out the water, apply curl cream/leave-in conditioner, and then style my hair and let it air dry. I don't comb it in this case because I don't want to comb out the waves/curls or cause hair breakage. Hair is more fragile when wet.
    • If I did not wash my hair, then there is no hair care besides maybe combing my hair.
  • Evening skin care
    • I use a wash cloth to wet my face.
    • I massage facial cleaner into my face and neck for at least a minute.
    • I rinse the facial cleaner off my face using the wash cloth
    • (If I need to shave, this is when I shave my face. I don't have a lot of facial hair and it grows in very slowly so probably someone who like, has a testosteronated body is better suited to go over the steps of how to shave. I don't really have to do much of it. Also, dysphoria makes me not want to describe this much.)
    • Every other night I apply retinol serum to places in my face that are developing wrinkles. (Unless I shaved that night, or if I have an eyebrow waxing appointment coming up) I've put this on pause because I started electrolysis for facial hair.
    • I always apply facial moisturizer at the end of whatever other skin care I did. I don't use the sunscreen lotion in the evening, so it's a different face lotion.
  • Put body lotion on my shoulders, arms, collarbone, and butt which is where my skin gets dry and itchy if I don't moisturize it after I shower. I skip this if it's very humid that night because it can become an overwhelming sensory thing.
  • Nail oil and hand cream
  • Brush my teeth
  • I often apply deodorant again just in case I sweat in my sleep but I think this is overkill and I am just self-conscious.
  • Take my meds.
  • Get in pajamas
  • Go to sleep :)

Given that a lot of these steps only happen sometimes, there's a lot of variance in how long this routine takes night to night. It can be as short as 20 minutes and as long as 45 or 50 minutes depending mostly on how long I take in the shower. (Not including dilating.)

I know I should really floss too but I don't do it consistently enough to feel comfortable putting it in my write-up of my routine. Sue me. Like I said, I'm not perfect and don't do every single thing I could be doing to groom. But a little goes a long way and doing what you can do is always better than doing nothing.

Explaining the different components

I'm gonna explain why I do what I do here, and the general theories behind this stuff, as well as link to what I think are good resources for learning what you might do for your own body. There's also a few things in here that I just do every so often and so aren't in the routine thing.

Hair

I'm very into hair. I love having good hair. I think everyone should take care of their hair so it's nice to touch.

Everyone has a different hair texture and hair porosity which will affect what hair care routine is right for you. The hair types are 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, 4b, 4c. This is usually phrased as 1. Straight 2. Wavy 3. Curly 4. Coily. With the abc being A. -ly B. -lier C. -lest. Porosity can be low, medium, or high. There's other factors in hair as well but these two determine most of your hair care.

Hair Type Quiz (If you have straight hair this quiz is not for you)
WikiHow to Determine Hair Type
WikiHow to Determine Hair Porosity

My hair hair type is 2c (Waviest, almost curly) and my hair porosity is low. My hair density is thick. My hair cuts down the middle path for every other attribute.

I can't tell you what hair care routine is best for anyone else's hair except that your goal is to keep your hair and scalp hydrated without drowning it in oil. If your hair and scalp get dry, your scalp will overproduce oil to compensate, so ironically if you have very oily hair you often can solve it by shampooing less and hydrating more.

Because my hair has low porosity, it takes a very long time to dry. I don't like the sensory experience of using a hair dryer and because my hair is so thick and low-porosity I can use a hair dryer for an hour and my hair will still be damp. Applying heat to my hair for that long can damage it so instead I just find gentle ways to let my hair dry on its own. Because of my hair porosity, thick products like jojoba oil or shea butter just sit on my hair and do not absorb into it. I use thin glycerin-based moisturizing products instead, which is better able to absorb into my hair follicles. People with very high porosity hair have the opposite issues, and need thicker hair products like jojoba oil and shea butter.

Because my hair is type 2c, I use sulfate-free shampoo and, because I use sulfate-free shampoo, I use silicon-free hair conditioner. Silicons can only be cleared out by sulfates, but sulfates are way too harsh for my hair and scalp, so no sulfates means no silicons. I lean mild with my shampoos.

Pretty much nobody should be shampooing their hair every single day. That will dry your hair and scalp a lot. Some people only shampoo once a month, others every other day, it's going to depend on what works for your hair and you will need to experiment. But it should not be every day. When you initially decrease how much you shampoo, your hair will seem really greasy, but with some patience your scalp will stop overproducing oil and you'll be able to at least get down to only every other day if not even less frequently.

Everybody should be using hair conditioner after they shampoo and it should not be "2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner" which just doesn't work very well. Even if you have very very short hair, your scalp is going to want moisturizing! Just use less of it when you have less hair. Even people who are literally completely bald should be moisturizing their scalp! Shampoo strips your hair and scalp of all its oils and you want to put something back, even if it's a tiny amount of thin conditioner that you spread thin around your head. Trust me, it's worth it.

You will eventually probably have product buildup on your hair, because hair conditioners etc. aren't getting fully rinsed out. This is normal and is solved by "clarifying." You could use a clarifying shampoo, but for me, all I do when I need to clarify is I shampoo twice consecutively before I add hair conditioner. I do this once every 1-2 months, maybe 3. You can tell you have buildup because your hair just doesn't seem to be getting clean anymore even though your routine that was working fine hasn't changed. You also might find small amounts of white grease on your hair and scalp that you can tell is literally old hair products. It kinda looks like dandruff at first but unlike dandruff you can smush it together rather than it being distinct flakes.

Because I have very thick wavy hair, I just use a wide-tooth comb to detangle my hair. Combing and brushing your hair has an added benefit of evenly distributing your natural oils throughout your hair. Brushes get caught in my hair and cause pain, pull my hair out, and kill all my waves and curls. So I do not brush my hair. I might reconsider this if I someday have waist-length hair.

Even if you have very long hair, getting an occasional haircut and trim is still necessary to resolve loose ends, de-bulk your hair, and shape it nicely. Maybe only once a year, even.

Experiment! Find what works for you! Everyone's hair is different just please keep it hydrated!

Facial Hair & Shaving

I have very very little facial hair that is very light and grows in very slowly. It's honestly just a sensory-bad thing for me before I even get dysphoric about it. Like, it takes weeks to even be visible to the naked eye. I don't really know anything about beard care besides that beards also need to be hydrated!! Look into beard oils and stuff like that if you have a beard please!!! Anyone who kisses you or touches your face will really appreciate it.

I use a shave lotion and regular razors, personally, but you could use a shaving cream or straight razors or whatever works for you. But yeah I don't really have advice here besides that whenever you shave anywhere you should be moisturizing that area to soothe the skin. Shaving like, mega-exfoliates dead skin so that skin is going to be sensitive fresh baby skin that needs oil to not get irritated.

Skin

Different parts of your body need different types of skin care! And different products!

Body

Any time you wash somewhere, it strips out the oils and makes it dry. I get terribly itchy after showering, personally, so I need to put body lotion all over my body unless it is particularly humid that day.

I use a gentle body soap when I shower because I found that heavily fragranced stuff is a bad sensory experience for me and sometimes irritates my dry skin.

Because my skin is dry, I don't wash all of it every single day, just the parts that tend to get gross frequently. The soapy water running down my arms and legs is enough to clean those parts of my body on the off-days since they don't get that gross in only one day unless I did some sort of intense physical activity or got something on them. If you find that your whole body does get gross every day, maybe cuz you go to the gym or do more physical labor than I do, then you should probably wash your whole body with soap daily.

If you stay at home for literally 24 hours most days, then, well, that's really not good for you, movement is important, but you probably can get away with showering every other day or something. Grooming is about feeling nice and making yourself nice to be around and interactive with physically. You should remember that this is all morally neutral and if you shower even less than this, that is OK. It will make you feel a bit icky, and less nice to touch, but it is morally neutral.

Face

There's different!! Skin types!!! Ah!! Fortunately there's only three: Oily, dry, and combination (both oily and dry). There's also "balanced skin" but omg who has that. I have dry skin and don't really get acne so all of my skin care is just based around moisturizing a ton.

People who just kinda look abstractly beautiful for reasons it's hard to put a finger on probably look that way because of their skin care (and makeup). Again, like all grooming, just do the amount that you can do and all the extra stuff may benefit you but is optional.

In the morning, you should "wash your face," moisturize your face (because any time you wash something it strips the oils and makes it dry!) and then always, every day regardless of the weather, use something to protect your face and neck from the sun. Personally, I use a morning facial lotion that has sun protection in it, so that it's just one step. This does mean I also have to buy a separate facial lotion to be my "night lotion." So some people prefer to just have the one facial moisturizer and also buy a separate sunscreen that they use in the morning. Because my skin is dry, washing it with cleanser twice a day makes things all irritated and bad feeling. So my morning "wash" is just using my hands or a wet washcloth to wipe off the gunk from my pillowcase. Since I wash my face every night before bed, not much gets on my face that needs washing anyway.

Sunscreen is necessary year round. Do not get skin cancer. UV damages your skin even when it's not warm out. Even if you have a lot of melanin. Use sun screen.

In the evening, you should wash your face with a facial cleanser, which is generally much more gentle than body soap, then do any sorts of serums or shaving or whatever in the middle, and then finish by moisturizing your face with a facial moisturizer, which is generally less than body lotion thick since face pores are more prone to clogging. Like I mentioned, I use a special "night time only lotion" because my morning routine uses a combination sunscreen-and-lotion. But you could just use normal facial moisturizer too.

The only serum that I, personally, use, is a retinol serum every other day, which is like, one of the only scientifically proven ways to reduce wrinkles. I don't think there's anything wrong with having wrinkles! But I get face dysphoria and making myself look younger helps with that. Using it too often can irritate skin and you should never use retinol in the morning because it makes your skin more sensitive to the sun which also means if you use retinol you definitely need sunscreen.

(Note from the future: I've paused my retinol usage because it makes electrolysis more dangerous.)

Lips

IDK if it's dry outside you should put lip balm or chapstick on your lips before going out. I haven't done this as much as I used to because wearing a KF94 mask most of my day also protects my lips from dry air very nicely.

Hands

I have dyshidrotic eczema so my hands get really really dry and then get covered in tiny painful itchy blisters. So I use very very thick moisturizing products for my hands. It'll depend on your hands but most people find that because of all the hand washing they do, and any time you wash something it strips all the oils and dries it out, that they need to use thicker stuff like hand creams or shea butter.

Nails

This is so very optional but I like trying to have hand-porn hands so I also have a nail care routine. A nice thing about doing nail care is that I never get painful hang nails, ingrown nails, or torn cuticles. But also like, nobody is gonna notice if you don't do nail care. It only matters if, like me, you do a lot of home manicures and take close-up photos of your fingernails a lot—or if you have long nails and want to prevent them from breaking.

I use a crystal/glass nail file to and shape my fingernails. I never use a clipper on my fingernails, which can not only crack nails but is more likely to tear cuticles or cause undesirable shapes or lengths that lead to ingrown nails.

I apply nail oil 2-4 times a day to my cuticles, nail bed, and under my fingernails. This prevents ingrown nails, torn cuticles, and hang nails; but it also offsets the fact that I'm constantly putting fucking acetone on my fingernails whenever I'm painting my nails. Acetone, unsurprisingly, strips the oils from your keratin and dries shit out! So then you need to moisturize! What a funny pattern!

Getting your nails wet makes them weaker and more likely to break, so using dish gloves when you do the dishes is a good idea (it also protects your hands from being dried out by dish soap.) If you're SimplyNailogical you might even use dish gloves in the shower but I think that's fucking insane and sounds sensory-bad so I do not do that. Nail oil protects your nails from the water seeping in and keeps your nails strong.

I'm not gonna get into it in detail how to do this but I also push my cuticles back and remove dead skin on my nails because it makes my nails look nicer and longer and helps my nail polish stick on longer.

Mouth

Brush your teeth twice a day! Talk to a dentist. Dental care is really important. You should probably also floss but I don't except after eating popcorn or candy. Mouthwash may or may not do something.

I get really bad dry mouth cuz of the meds I take so I use Flintt's Mints to help with that. They make you drool.

Smells

I don't use perfume or anything like that because Sensory though I've considered looking into it. My shea butter is scented a bit strongly so I kinda feel like that's plenty of smells for me.

Apply deodorant to your armpits every day even if you aren't planning on doing physical activity. Even if you have a musk kink you should probably do this for the sake of the people around you who do not have musk kinks. I can smell dudes from across the bus sometimes and like, seriously, just use the thing.

On Clothing

Clothing is a matter of taste. I think everyone looks best when they wear clean, untarnished, well-fitted clothing. Well-fitted means not too tight and not too loose. My rule of thumb is to start with something that feels tight and then keep going up a size one at a time until you get to the size that stops feeling tight and feels comfortable to you and like a good sensory time. Then, stop there and do not go any larger.

You do not need to launder every article of clothing every single time you use it, but if it has visible dirt or stains you should not wear it in public, in my opinion, unless you don't have other options. It's morally neutral but it does make you less desirable to touch and interact with physically. I had a boss who wore a baggy old red sox hoodie covered in dirt and stains every day and it was kinda gross. A lot of men just dress like that and don't see the issue—then wonder why people don't respond well to their advances and get the callipers out to find the answer. It's not the shape of your forehead; it's the hoodie you haven't put in the laundry since high school.

You also should put clothing in the laundry if it ever has an odor. Just stick your nose in the armpit area or crotch area and if there's a scent then please please throw that in the laundry. Any time you are trying to "look nice" for any reason, wear clean clothing and not something that's been worn five times since the last launder.

I don't iron my clothes because I'm lazy. I hang them all up right after they come out of the dryer and that keeps them from getting wrinkly in the first place. People do notice wrinkles and stuff but I just can't be bothered. I am okay with being wrinkly if it saves me spoons.

When clothing gets so old that it's frayed and falling apart: Stop wearing it! I've personally been such a clothing hoarder because I used to not be able to afford to buy clothes and got everything I wore from free piles and basically the garbage. I looked terrible and felt bad about myself and how I looked all the time. When I started actually just, buying clothes from a store, I felt a lot better about how I was presenting. It's morally neutral but, again, we are talking about things that make you feel and look nice, not things that make you a good or bad perosn.

Generally speaking, a graphic tee-shirt with jeans is like, Sims Default Bare Minimum Effort Look. I don't really think anybody looks "good" like this, so much as they just look "fine" or "OK." It was in fashion in the early 10s/late 00s but it's not really anymore. It's something you wear to work when you really don't feel like dressing up and the Company Tee Shirt is considered always acceptable.

I don't really consider fashion to be a part of self-grooming past keeping your clothes clean but I think that for anyone of any gender, putting any amount of thought and effort into your outfits will show. Again, a little always goes a long way. That little bit of extra effort makes all the difference in people noticing you and thinking you look nice. Yesterday I wore a dress I've worn to work plenty times before, with a necklace I wear pretty much every single day, but the only difference today was that I also wore a ring that matched my nail polish. I got compliments on my outfit all day! It was just the addition of the ring matching the nail polish that showed that little bit of extra thought and effort that made everyone think that I looked so pretty and put together and nice.

What Products I Use :)

It's not a Beauty Guru "My Beauty Routine" YouTube Video without saying what brands I use. A lot of people said they get overwhelmed by brands so I figured this might help. Remember that this is primarily influenced by what is affordable and easily accessible at stores near me.

Hair

For curl cream/leave-in conditioner, when I use it, I use Curl Cult Enhance Moisturizing Curl Cream which is a salon-only product that's really fucking expensive so when I run out I'm gonna try to find something cheaper. I've found that the whole Curl Cult line of shampoo, conditioner, and curl cream are amazing for my hair... but I just cannot justify spending that much on hair care products. It's also annoying to acquire. So I've made compromises on what products I use to save money and it's been Fine.

The wide-toothed comb I use is this exact cheap purple guy off Amazon and I've been using this same one for like ten years and it's still in good condition and still works great to detangle my hair.

For shampoo I use Field Day Honey Almond Shampoo which I like the smell of and works well for my hair type. For conditioner I use Tea Tree Therapy but honestly like I might just try to find and use the matching Field Day Conditioner since the shampoo has been going well. I still don't feel like I've found a like, Perfect Hair Conditioner for me that has the right balance of affordable, not too strongly scented, and well-fit to my hair type. The Curl Cult stuff was amazing but like I said, just so expensive.

Body

Currently I use Eczema Honey bar soap and Aveeno Daily Moisturiing Lotion.

For deodorant I use BAN Unscented Roll-On Deodorant or whatever I could find that's convenient and not a stick. I find that stick deodorants irritate my underarm skin and make it look like I have ring worm (and makes it hurt and itch) so I always use gel or roll-on deodorants. I usually try to use a scent that is the same as anything else scented I use or I use unscented.

Face

I use CeraVe Hydrating Facial Cleanser, CeraVe AM Facial Moisturizing Sun Lotion, CeraVe Renewing Retinol Serum, and the two special night time facial moisturizers I alternate between because I can't decide which I like more is CeraVe PM Facial Moisturizing Lotion and CeraVe Skin Renewing Night Cream. Usually I use the PM Lotion after shaving? I'm still experimenting.

(Note from the future: I switched to Aveeno extra genlte face products to make electrolysis less dangerous. I'll return to the ones above when I'm done with electrolysis because they did wonder for my face.)

For shaving I use KissMyFace Unscented Moisturizing Shaving Lotion. You'll notice most things I use are unscented and that's because having lots of different scents on my is sensory bad and also fragrances can irritate dry skin.

Hands

I use Berry Butter It works very nicely to keep my hands moisturized and keeping my dyshidrotic eczema under control. I am constantly getting compliments from strangers on how it smells.

Nails

For nail oil I use the Holo Taco Nail Oil Pen before and after manicures, and cuticle buddy for my throughout the daily maintenance oiling.

I also got my glass nail file from Holo Taco and I love it. It does such a good job making filing my nails a much better sensory experience.

Mouth

I don't know who needs toothpaste and toothbrush recommendations but I use Colgate Total Clean Mint Toothpaste which is the best sensory experience for me when it comes to toothpastes I've found, and I use Colgate 360 Replaceable Toothbrush Heads because I want my toothbrush to always be exactly the same and also I guess it's good for the environment. I like that the back has a tongue scrubber too.

Who I look to for learning about this stuff

Lab Muffin Beauty Science is an excellent source for skin and hair care information.

Kelli Marissa and SimplyNailogical are the Nail Influencers I follow but I should note that Kelli has never said a negative thing about any brand ever and SimplyNailogical owns Holo Taco and it's no secret that she gives advice in ways which bias you towards buying her products.

For hair, I ask my hair stylist! Find a hair stylist who does a good job working with your hair and just ask them what kind of stuff you should be doing. Naturally Curly is also a good resource for hair stuff for people who don't have straight hair. Sorry straight haired people, I have no idea how your hair works or what to do to take care of it besides that you probably need hair conditioner and probably shampoo too much.

For mouth, talk to your dentist. For any severe skin issues, talk to a dermatologist.

I think WikiHow is a generally good resource for pretty much anything related to basic self-grooming and self-care.

I am not talking about makeup or my eyebrow stuff because I don't consider that to be a basic part of personal grooming. I will say, however, to any trans women reading this, that most of the reason cis women in public look different from you is not biological; it's because they are wearing "no-makeup makeup" and shaping their eyebrows and stuff. I don't wear makeup most days because Sensory and because I wear a KF94 mask for most of every day when I'm in public, but on special occasions I'll do some very light makeup. I do get my brows waxed and it really helps with face dysphoria.

Questions?

If I left something out feel free to ask in the comments, but keep in mind that I am absolutely not an expert and if your question is "What should I do if my hair/skin/nails/etc. type is different from yours?" then the answer is that I do not know and you should look at the resources above to learn more.