Men of the world. Dudes. My guys … we have to talk. Because Frank Ocean knows your secret, and you have failed him because you don’t maintain your skin-care routines. (Not you, John Mayer. You’re doing just fine.)
Ocean is on the cover of the February 2019 GQ; in the accompanying interview, he chats about everything from covering “Moon River” to why men need to wash their faces more. And honestly? More men’s interviews should include the question, “Are you about to drop the skin-care routine?”, whether to shame the subject into doing better by their skin, or to instruct men the world over on how to achieve a healthy glow without going full Bateman.
“I really do believe in a night cream,” Ocean explained. “I feel like men just go to sleep. They may wash their face or they don’t even bother — they go to sleep with the day face on. You really need to do a gentle wash and put a night moisturizer on. You can’t have the retinol in your creams in the day because it makes you more sun-sensitive, so you wanna throw that on at night. I need the night cream because when I wake up I feel very beautiful, moisturized and ready to have people making eye contact with me, ready to look above my eyebrow, below the eyebrow.”
He also extolled the virtues of sewing a silk lining in one’s hats, as recommended by his mother Katonya Breaux, who is herself a skin-care guru. (She also swears by a nightly retinol and telling men to wash their hands before they hold your face in an act of romance.) “Some days, like in the winter, when I wear a lot of knit hats, my skin doesn’t like that,” Ocean mused. “My mom told me years ago that you gotta get somebody to stitch the silk inside the lining of the cap so it doesn’t irritate your skin, ‘cause your skin is sensitive.”
But not even Frank Ocean knows every secret there is, and he wants answers, too. “It’s been all these years, and Pharrell [Williams] still hasn’t given us the keys yet. He just says ‘exfoliate,’ but it’s not just ‘exfoliate’,” he lamented. “We need more keys.” Pharrell, if you’re reading this, unlock it please.
