Model Imaan Hammam’s career requires her to be full-on glam all day by wearing beautiful clothes and a full face of makeup. While exciting, she still enjoys her downtime and in Harper’s Bazaar’s Go to Bed with Me video series, Iman shows us how she likes to wind down.
Before she starts her bedtime routine, the Moroccan and Egyptian beauty likes to light a candle by Diptyque. For the video, she used Diptyque’s Mimosa scented candle and followed that with incense to “bring positive energy.”
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
To cleanse her face, she likes to use Epicuren Silk Radiance 3-in-1 Cleansing Oil. “What I love about it is it’s super silky and as you can see the texture of it is a little oily so I’m gonna rub it into my hands and gently massage it into the skin,” she said. She uses the cleanser as a way to take off her makeup.
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
“I never sleep in makeup. I try to. I mean it depends. When I’m having a real crazy day at work and I’m tired sometimes it happens but normally I don’t because I think it’s not good for your skin so even when you’re tired, make sure to wash your skin.”
But that’s just one part of her cleansing routine. The 25-year-old likes to double cleanse. Next, she uses Osmosis + Beauty Deep Clean Detox Cleanser. She cites her mom as the person she learned skincare from and refers to her as the “herb doctor.” “I grew up using oils and cleansing the skin with natural products which really helped me and also because I didn’t have any clue,” she said.
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
“But when I got a little older and when I moved to New York, I really started looking at skincare differently because you get to shoot, you have a lot of makeup on and your skin gets to break out so I was like okay I need to get my sh-t together. So I had to learn about products. Now, I have a skincare routine that I have been using for over five years.”
For step three, she uses Epicuren Colostrum Hydrating Mist. As a model, Imaan travels a lot which dries her skin out and so she relies on the hydrating mist to keep her skin hydrated. She also likes to spray her hair with it. She follows that up with Epicuren Bulgarian Rose Otto Oil.
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
To make sure that the products she uses so far seep into the skin, she uses the Osmosis + Beauty Epic Skin Tool. “What it does is it helps promoting the skin product and it helps with a deep penetration so it makes sure the product really goes in the skin,” she said.
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
For creams, she likes to use Epicuren Moisture Surge Hyaluronic Acid Gel, Ole Henriksen Banana Bright Eye Crème, and Epicuren Colostrum Luminous Glow Cream.
Moving on to her lips, she likes to use Fresh Sugar Lip Polish Exfoliator. She scrubs her lips and then rinses them off and follows it up with Rosebud Perfume Co. Strawberry Lip Balm.
Harper's Bazaar/YouTube
She likes to apply Briogeo Strengthening Treatment Oil on her hair and scalp. “It really helps the hair grow and everyone knows me for my hair. It’s big and you don’t know how much work I have to do for all of that hair every morning,” she said.
Imaan ends her nighttime routine with Byredo Tulipmania Hand Scrub, Epicuren Peptide Rich Hand Cream, and last but not least Costa Brazil Kaya Jungle Firming Body Oil.
Model Imaan Hammam's Special Tool For Deep Product Penetration | Go To Bed With Me | Harper's BAZAAR
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Since it’s Stress Awareness Month, we caught up with Keanne Owens, LCSW, founder of Journey To Harmony Therapy Center, to talk about these triggers and what Black women can do to manage and cope.
Owens is an experienced South Florida-based counselor and social worker who offers her services via Grow Therapy, a therapy and medication management platform. She has worked with Black women professionals to unpack issues related to workplace stressors. “One is the pressure to perform–having to meet deadlines and deliverables. And a lot of times, these subtle stressors from performance are put upon ourselves as Black women. We want to make sure we’re doing our best. We don’t want to be critiqued in certain ways.”
Excessive micromanagement leading to fear of overly critical bosses is another subtle trigger that can negatively impact Black women in the workplace.
“Whenever something is done wrong, or we experience some type of injustice and have to report it, it’s the fear of retaliation–[fear that] we won’t be taken seriously or [our words] will be taken out of context because of being deemed as the ‘angry Black woman,’” she said.
Black Women And Workplace Stress Triggers
Her sentiments are backed by research. A recent report by Coqual found that 28% of Black women (compared to 17% of White men) say their supervisor uses “excessive control or attention to detail” when managing them. There’s more: A survey by the National Employment Law Project found that Black workers were “more likely to have concerns (80 percent) and twice as likely as white workers (18 percent) to have unresolved concerns at work, with 39 percent reporting they were “not satisfied with the employer’s response or did not raise concerns for fear of retaliation.”
The survey also found that 14 percent of Black respondents said they “avoided raising concerns to their employer for fear of retaliation—more than twice the average rate of 6 percent for all survey respondents.”
Owens pointed to the fact that these subtle stress triggers can negatively impact our physical health and our career advancement. “A lot of time it’ll affect our productivity,” Owens added. “We start to have negative thoughts of ourselves. The stressors can also cause fatigue. We’re no longer meeting or working up to our desired potential.” Other challenges as a result include insomnia and increased insolation, withdrawal, and lack of motivation to apply for jobs or promotions even when qualified.
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How To Manage Subtle Stress Triggers
While there are systemic issues at play for Black women at work that has less to do with us and more to do with major overhauls that must be addressed by the powers that be, there are steps we can take for the betterment of ourselves and our mental health. Owens offered the following tips:
Tap into a support system, whether it’s a coworker you trust, a family member, an organization, or an outlet like a hobby.
Create a good work-life balance before burnout even starts. “Having certain boundaries [is the goal] such as, for example, if you get off at 5, you get off at 5. If your job description is this, you don’t go above and beyond because that brings you to a lot of burnout,” Owens said.
Prioritize self-care, whatever that means for you. “If you don’t have a routine, create one. Practice mindfulness and even some meditation,” she added.
Create structure in your life outside of work. “Even if you have a family, applying some structure in your routine helps relieve stress,” she said.
Get into grounding techniques. “Do a real quick square breathing exercise, that’s literally 30 seconds, or you can do a grounding technique that’s less than two minutes, right there where you are. You don’t need any other materials. That’s something you can do with just yourself and your body.”
Ask for help. “As Black women, we don’t ask for help enough,” she said. “Find where you need to ask for help. A lot of times, people think that’s indicative of weakness, but we need to rewrite that narrative. It’s okay to ask for help where you see fit. [If] you’re a mom, [it could be] every Wednesday from 5 to 6, your children are with the dad. You have to carve out that time.”
For more information on Grow Therapy, visit their website. You can also find out more about Keanne Owens, LCSW, via BeginYourJourneyToHarmony.com.
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