As it seems I’ve become ITG’s chief facial correspondent, I had no choice but to march across town last Saturday to the Aveda Institute and put my face in the nearly certified hands of one Ali Oshinsky. Recognize the name? Bet you do—from these pages. Ali was a wonderful intern—one of the greats—and I was willing to bet she could become an excellent facialist. But first I’d have to find out: How weird is it to get a facial from someone who used to work with you? And so my intrepid journey began.

Turns out—not that weird! Ali wore the Aveda Institute uniform, which is a somewhat updated white smock shirt (and not her usual mix of very colorful, very stylish sample sale finds) but we won’t hold that against her. She greeted me professionally (which was weird), and then we got to work. She assessed my skin—pretty good, with some redness and some enlarged pores near the center of my face—and decided that the best course of action was her own mix of clay and salicylic acid, an ultrasonic scrubber, and the high frequency machine. Plus extractions. That’s when I asked her:

“But wait…is this weird for you?” Extracting your friends’ sebum from their pores must be a least a little weird, no?

“Once you’re under the light, it’s just skin. Could be anyone,” she told me as she went to town on my nose. What she did say is that she finally understands why so many experts say you shouldn’t do your own extractions. “I’m seeing you up close, from a different angle; I’m sterilized, I’m using gauze—it’s totally different than what you’re going to do at home in your bathroom with your Tweezerman No-Slip after a glass of wine,” she said. Guilty as charged. “I still do it, too!” she admitted. We all have our vices.

The thing I can do at home, though? High frequency, she says. “They cost like $30 on Amazon. Nothing I’ve seen works as well on cystic pimples,” Ali explained. Sold—hook, line, and sinker. Now the question becomes, how do I convince Ali to do house calls?

—Emily Ferber

Photo via ITG.