Handing over a business card. Lifting a glass. Holding the strap on a crowded train. The hands are seen almost as often as the face, and yet they are rarely looked after with the same attention.
They also show age sooner. Put a face and a pair of hands that have lived the same years side by side, and the hands are usually the ones that look duller, rougher and less firm. This is not unusual, and it can be explained by the way the hands are built and by the sheer quantity of work they do every day.
This article looks at the reasons from four angles, and then turns to a different way of thinking: regarding the hands as a subject of beauty care, exactly as we do the face.
Few sebaceous glands, thin skin
The back of the hand has some of the fewest sebaceous glands on the body. Sebum forms the film that covers the water held in the stratum corneum and slows its evaporation; with so little of it, the back of the hand is dry by nature. The palm, by contrast, is protected by a thick stratum corneum. Within a single hand, two very different kinds of skin live side by side.
The skin on the back of the hand is also thin, with little fat beneath it, so disturbed texture from dryness and the deeper changes that come with age appear directly on the surface. There is no plump layer, as there is on the cheek, to soften them.
This structure is something we are born with, and it is shared regardless of age or gender. That is why Soie regards hand beauty not as a habit for a particular kind of person but as one that concerns everyone who has a pair of hands.
Washed, wet, rubbed and sunlit
On top of that structure comes daily exposure. Hand washing, housework, alcohol sanitiser. Every wash removes some of the sebum film and unsettles the balance between the water in the stratum corneum and the lipids that cover it. Because we wash our hands far more often than the face, this barrier is disturbed more easily here than anywhere else.
Friction counts too. Drying with a towel, handling paper, carrying bags: small rubs repeated hundreds of times a day. And then the sun. The hands are not covered by clothing, they receive more UV light than the face, and sunscreen tends to be an afterthought. Over the years that exposure surfaces as dryness, dullness and the spots that gather on the back of the hand.
A part of the body that never rests
The hands are often described as the hardest-working part of the body. Grasping, touching, eating, cooking, cleaning, caring for children, working. They move all day, and the finger joints bend and straighten thousands of times. The skin over each joint has a built-in slack that lets it move, and when that skin is dry the slack shows as fine lines.
The hands also carry out the skin's work of regulating temperature and receiving sensation. They touch hot dishes, go into cold water, and pass through sharp changes of temperature many times a day. For the skin, this too is a small, repeated strain. The face is washed a few times a day; the hands get wet and dry out dozens of times.
For all that work, the hands receive far less care than the face. This gap, between how much they do and how much they are looked after, may be the single largest reason they show age first.
Changes in the skin, changes beneath it
It helps to separate two kinds of change: those in the skin itself and those beneath it. With age, the fat under the skin diminishes and the skin loses firmness, so veins and tendons stand out and a once-rounded hand takes on an angular look. Changes beneath the skin are difficult to reverse through self-care alone.
Changes in the skin, on the other hand, such as dryness, fine lines and spots, can be prevented with sun protection and moisturising. Knowing what is within reach and what is not, and then doing the reachable part every day, is the realistic starting point of hand beauty. If a change persists and concerns you, a dermatologist is the right person to ask.
This distinction is also a source of hope. Not every change that comes with age is beyond our influence. Two entirely ordinary habits, sunscreen and moisturising, speak to most of what happens in the skin itself, and both can begin on any ordinary morning.
Caring for the hands as we care for the face
Ordinary hand care has generally stayed within the bounds of protection: keeping dryness and roughness at bay. The hand beauty that Soie (pronounced swah; French for silk) proposes goes further. It regards the hands as a subject of beauty care, just like the face, and aims to bring out their moisture, smoothness and radiance. If you use a lotion and a serum on your face, then a serum for the hands follows naturally, and the whole idea of looking after them shifts.
Enlight Hand Serum is formulated with that structure in mind, for the back of the hand with its scarce sebum and the palm with its thick stratum corneum. It brings together EGF and KGF (skin-conditioning ingredients) with five ceramides and peptides (moisturising ingredients), leaves no stickiness, and can be used after every wash. Soie's view of the hand's structure is set out on our Hand Beauty page, and the daily routine in the hand beauty guide.
The hands show age before the face because they work harder and are cared for less. The structure cannot be changed; the amount of care can, starting today. Wash, then moisturise. Making that one step as ordinary for the hands as it already is for the face is the quietest way to keep hands beautiful as the years go by.
