3 Wellness & Beauty Habits This Pro Esthetician Wants You To Quit  

If you’re looking for it, there’s no shortage of beauty advice to be found on social media. Just scroll through SkinTok or the skin influencer side of Instagram and you’ll be bombarded with product recs and routine breakdowns.  

Like with all things on the internet, not all of it is good advice either. So, how does one sift through the heads of internet advice to find something that will actually work for them? Well, for those in the know, they go to esthetician and beauty curator Natasha Glasgow. 

Her career is built on the foundation of one mission: Help people create routines that fit into their lifestyle. Currently, that’s exactly what she does for her curated list of top clientele. And on this episode of mindbodygreen’s beauty podcast Clean Beauty School, she shares her secrets. 

“My goal is to be the trusted source that you could come to and know, ‘Natasha is going to tell me exactly what I need and what I don’t.’ That way, these people don’t need to get emotionally or financially involved in the process of finding it,” she says. 

During the conversation, Glasgow shares some of her favorite products (that are actually worth the money), trends she can get behind, treatments that deliver real results, and finally—beauty habits to quit. 

Doesn’t it seem like wellness and beauty routines have spiraled out of control? When I scroll on social media, I’m shocked at how involved folks’ morning and evening protocols are. Glasgow feels similarly—and has been working to minimize her routines across the board, as well as encourage her clients to do the same.

“I want to take the hustle culture that’s ingrained in me out of my wellness routine,” she says. “Before, I was stacking cold plunge, sauna, dry brush, LED mask, and so on. My nervous system was on overdrive.” 

“I’ve talked about over-exfoliation a million times before, but I'll never stop,” she tells me on the podcast. She’s not wrong: Over-exfoliation is an issue that plagues the industry. From kids who scrub their faces red to adults using triple acid peels nightly, folks are overdoing it. 

And there are serious repercussions, such as increased sensitivity, damaged skin barriers, increased inflammation, and even premature aging. 

In the episode, Glasgow zeros in on one practice in particular: “I’ll just talk about one type of over-exfoliation and that’s at-home dermaplaning,” she says. “I see it as a huge trend and I see it talked about on all kinds of platforms across a lot of different influences, age range, and skin types.”

Dermaplaning, if you’re not familiar, is the process of shaving the face with a super-sharp blade to remove peach fuzz and the top layer of your skin.

“As consumers, we’re addicted to having the experience of removing the peach fuzz, getting that baby smooth skin, and how great your makeup looks that day. We want instant gratification. But what’s really happening on day three, four, five—that’s when the skin starts going crazy,” she explains. 

She is, if you can’t tell, not a fan. 

“You’re literally scraping off the skin mantle!” she says. “You have a whole ecosystem there that’s working for you. And when you remove that, your skin becomes very confused. Your body just starts producing a lot of oil and an onslaught of other issues start popping up—literally.” 

There have been plenty of think-pieces about how Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are obsessed with skin care products. And professionals are rightly concerned about how this influences these generations’ self-perception, self-esteem, and skin. For Glasgow, she not only cares about the mental health repercussions—but also how these products are influencing developing skin. 

“There’s no regulation as far as ingredients are involved for age ranges and tween skin,” she says. “But when you’re that young, your skin is still developing. We wouldn’t give a child anything that would affect the development of their brain. But we’re allowing these kids to use really harsh active ingredients like retinol, vitamin C, AHAs, BHAs, and other actives.” 

And we're seeing those changes in real time. 

Hear our entire conversation below for Glasgow’s product recs, favorite treatments, and more: