I became a habitual lotion user around a decade ago after I was diagnosed with psoriasis. For those who are blessedly unfamiliar with this condition: it tends to flare in dryer winter months, and if you never thought about using body lotion in your life, once you get psoriasis you will try EVERYTHING to get it under control. You will put on lotion and creams and potions and light sage and chant over expensive crystals you don’t believe in as you wrap your moisturized limbs in Saran wrap like your body is meat at the grocery store. It’s like when you’re at the end of pregnancy and just want to go into labor and one of your wellness-oriented friends tells you, with such conviction, “Dates induce labor,” and then you find yourself dusting off your food processor to make date balls — with walnuts and shredded coconut you bought just for this — even though you don’t even want to eat date balls!
Late last year, I covered the burgeoning trends of “therapeutic laziness” and “bed rotting,” as laid out by top trend forecasting firm WGSN. Basically, we’re all too exhausted to do anything, much less a skincare routine that has as many steps as making your own croissants. This gives brands an opportunity to capitalize on our state of malaise. Here’s how I described it:
[T]he number one trend in beauty for 2025, per WGSN, will be “therapeutic laziness.” This is an “anti-wellness” trend anchored around skincare and something called “bed rotting.” Though this sounds like your husband lost his sandwich in the duvet, it refers to rejecting productivity in favor of intentionally spending time in bed.
I really started noticing the laziness trend this year in body moisturizers. I’ve been a committed Vanicream lotion user for a while now (recommended to me by multiple dermatologists). I have applied it diligently every day for years. I am so committed to it that I even pump it into smaller bottles when I travel. If Vogue ever asked me what’s in my purse, I might produce a tub of Vanicream.
Then one day recently, my husband was complaining about dry winter skin. I told him to be like me and just put the Vanicream on every day. He told me that was too much work. Lotion: you have to rub it in.
Obviously, he’s not the only one who feels this way as evidenced by the popularity of spray sunscreen and the burgeoning category of non-lotion moisturizers. A brand called Hanni offered to send me some of their products to try and I accepted. The package came with this:
Who in 2025 cannot relate? At the end of most days between work and kids and just a passing glance at the news, who amongst us is not, either literally or figuratively, slipping head-first onto the floor as we metabolize the general decline of, well, everything?
Let’s pause for a moment and acknowledge that something is really wrong with modern life if dispensing lotion from a bottle and then rubbing it into skin feels like TOO MUCH. Let’s also acknowledge that for many people (in the U.S. anyway), this is unfortunately how it is. We have to work tirelessly to earn enough money for a middle-class existence, to say nothing of saving for the kids’ college funds, retirement, etc. Work for many of us involves, thanks to Slack and email and phones, being available basically 24/7 to employers and clients. If you’re a millennial like me, you probably feel pressured to intensely parent your kids on top of all this, which has led to widespread enough burnout that then-surgeon general Dr. Vivek H. Murthy went on a press tour last year to cast the stress of modern parenting as an urgent public health issue.
(I know many Back Row subscribers live outside the U.S. Those in other countries tell me that people do not feel so burnt out everywhere! I asked my friend , who lives in Paris, if people in France feel oppressed by their daily responsibilities, and she said, “No. Because we have free daycare, and free preschool, and six to eight weeks vacation.” Also, she reminded me, France has a “right to disconnect” law — a law! — so that employees won’t be penalized for not working during off hours.)
Anyway, Hanni sent me two products. The first, a stick called The Fatty, is sort of like a deodorant stick that you smooth onto skin, which saves you the effort of dispensing lotion from a bottle. It goes on clear so it’s easier to rub it in.
The second was something called a “splash salve” that you can apply in the shower, which saves you the effort of doing any body care after you get out of your nice hot water. You apply it to clean skin, rinse lightly, and then gently towel dry. I won’t lie, when I got this product and put it in my shower, I didn’t think I would feel compelled to use it. But I have been working on finishing a big project and putting in long hours a lot this year, and there was one day when I was washing my hair and it hit me: I really did feel a specific exhaustion — bone-deep tiredness — and did reach with relief for that jar of splash salve, grateful to be saving myself the trouble of having to get out and then apply lotion.
As far as their moisturizing properties, both of them worked just as well as the lovely but much more expensive ($112) body oil by Augustinus Bader, maker of the infamously expensive face moisturizer The Rich Cream ($305 for 1.7 ounces).
(Quick aside relating to The Rich Cream, which has drawn a ton of attention in recent years for being both shockingly expensive and also good, which is apparently a rare combination: I tried it when I received free samples as an editor and did really like it, but I always go back to this basic $10 lotion by Neutrogena. For a story I wrote a while back, a top makeup artist recommended I try Retrouvé’s face moisturizer and reader, it was amazing, particularly if your skin tends to get very dry. But again, it’s wildly expensive at $380. I found this face oil by U Beauty that’s around half the price delivers a similar result.)
I also ordered from Sephora a product by Kate McLeod that I’ve seen everywhere: a moisturizing body stone. It’s basically the same idea as The Fatty: you rub it on your skin like a bar of soap, it goes on clear, transferring cocoa butter and oils to your skin. It’s packaged in a round box that I find very satisfying to open and close:
And it comes wrapped in sort of a protective cheese cloth.
You can get it in an unscented variety, which is always a plus for those with sensitive skin. (The stones also come in lavender and citrus-y honeysuckle.) The brand also makes a stick in case the cheese cloth/box-opening part feels like too much for you.
Both The Fatty and Kate McLeod’s moisturizing stone/stick have a practical benefit even if the idea of rubbing lotion into your skin doesn’t fill you with dread: you can toss it into a carry-on bag without the horror of having to transfer lotion from a larger bottle to a smaller one. Or you could easily tuck it into your fishing vest, which is apparently how some people are surviving air travel these days.
Because that’s what it’s about, sadly, in 2025. Avoiding the effort of the typical with whatever else we can afford that might be a little bit easier.
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