Why micellar water became the internet's holy grail of lazy skincare

Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

Micellar water should be your new best friend.

Skincare is kind of a cult: You stumble across one subreddit and suddenly you're stocking up on sheet masks, researching acids, and agonizing over each pore.

Layering serums and testing AHAs/BHAs can be wildly overwhelming, especially if you're just getting into skincare or a functional member of society who doesn't have the time for a full Korean 10-step routine. That's where micellar comes in — the cleanser is like a shortcut for skincare. It'll take the gunk off your face, and you don't have to wash it off after.

Micellar water has been used for decades in France. According to urban legend, it's because Parisian tap water is so harsh, nobody wants to put it on their face. Whether you wear makeup or you go bare-faced, everyday face wash can't remove all of the grime that builds up on your skin throughout the day. Micellar water is a surfactant, which means it surrounds the grime and breaks it away from your pores like dish soap on a greasy pan.

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Lab Muffin, a beauty blog run by a chemistry PhD, likens the dirt on your face to oil sitting on top of water "like a bad toupee."

Surfactants, she explains, are molecules made up of a head that attracts water and repels oil and a tail that attracts oil and repels water. In the bottle, the surfactants are arranged in little clusters called micelles, with the heads pointing outward and the tails pointing in so they're in a microscopic circle. But when you pour the liquid out onto a cotton pad, the surfactants arrange themselves so the heads point down and the tails point up, ready to suck up all the sebum and oil from your face.

(Check out Lab Muffin's explanation for adorable drawings that demonstrate how this works!)

Micellar water, in short, is a holy grail product for the lazy. Thanks to the oil micelles, it both cleanses your skin and moisturizes it.

"It's almost like makeup wipe liquid in a bottle," Lab Muffin explains.

Although it can't replace your whole skincare routine — most skincare and beauty bloggers recommend washing your face first and then wiping your face with a micellar water-soaked cotton pad — it does cut some steps out. The gentle cleanser is so easy, it's perfect for a post-gym refresher or getting the airport grime off while traveling.

If you really want to slack off, though, micellar water is the go-to one-stop shop for washing your face. Since it's both a cleanser and a moisturizer, you can occasionally skip the post-face-wash lotion, since you don't have to worry about it drying out your skin. In all honesty, I've ended many drunk weekends by sloppily dumping micellar water on a cotton round and smearing it across my face. I may wake up hungover, but at least my skin looks good!

My colleague Alexis Nedd put it best: It's just lazy bitch juice.

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If you're looking to condense your skincare routine, try out micellar water!