The gag is Black does crack. Not as often as we think but we must be careful with the catchy saying because it lends to misinformation. And while we love the many blessings of having melanin skin, we still have to be good to our skin. As the temperatures and seasons change, we must arm ourselves with the best products and tips to keep our skin on glow. To do that, we enlisted some help.
Self-proclaimed, Native New Yawker, Danielle Gray is a skincare girly we can trust. For years, she's been helping us get our skin together one online video at a time. You may know her as the @stylenbeautydoc on Instagram but Gray has also been featured in Allure, ESSENCE, Good Housekeeping and seen on Rachael Ray, Dr. Phil, and New York Live. We had the opportunity to chat with her about some hacks and products she trusts and this is what she had to say about keeping her skin glowing all winter long.
Courtesy of Danielle Gray
Her top fall/winter skincare must-haves:
- Sunscreen: "Yes, even darker skin—sun exposure also worsens pigmentation."
- Retinoids: "They do a number of things for the skin—help with texture, discoloration, boosts collagen, etc."
- Essence + Hydrating Serum: "Hydrated skin glows, looks bouncy, and is less prone to damage. And yes, you need to hydrate even if you have oily skin. I have oily skin and love using a combo of an essence and a hydrating serum on damp skin, followed by a moisturizer."
- Vitamin C: "It may not be for everybody, but I love vitamin C because there’s good research on its ability to protect the skin from environmental damage, boosting collagen, and its brightening properties. Aka, it comes with receipts that it’s going to help your skin look more snatched and glowy."
- Derm visits: "Okay, I know this isn’t a product, but I love how my derm treatments have made improvements to my skin along with what I do at home with my skincare routine."
Her go-to products for hyperpigmentation and discoloration:
"I know my answer is about to make people mad, but honestly, the best product is very subjective. What your skin loves, my skin may hate. But if you’re looking to treat discoloration, there are some things you can look for, but you’ll have to actually try the products to see how they work for you. Look for ingredients like niacinamide, lactic acid, alpha arbutin, licorice root, tranexamic acid, glycolic acid, vitamin C, retinoids, etc. You don’t need to find 8 different products with these ingredients—look for products that have a number of these ingredients, like Murad Rapid Dark Spot Correcting Serum.
"You also want to use sunscreen religiously–year-round. Sun exposure worsens pigmentation. Avoiding getting discoloration is probably one of the best ways to treat it—though in some cases, this isn’t practical. Irritation can lead to inflammation that can lead to hyperpigmentation. So avoiding irritation to the skin (i.e. burns, scratches, dryness, bug bites, acne, friction, etc.) can lessen your likelihood of getting dark spots.
"Another great tool is a skin of color pro—an esthetician and/or dermatologist who has extensive experience working on skin of color. Some discoloration doesn’t respond well to at-home treatments, and you may need to see a pro—but again, you want to see someone who knows what they’re doing with [your skin] because, in the wrong hands, it could get worse."
Courtesy of Danielle Gray
Her ultimate tip for avoiding dry skin in the winter:
"One of the best things you can do is remove yourself from hot showers. People HATE when I say this, but I’m not telling you to take an ice-cold shower. Hot water zaps the skin, and skin of color already suffers from dry skin—when you add cold winter and drying things like indoor heating and fabrics like wool, it’s a Sahara. Turn the water temperature down bit by bit. You can do it! Another best practice is to apply your moisturizer right after a shower while your skin is still damp."
Her recommendation for a simple nighttime skincare routine:
"Use a gentle cleanser for your skin type and current skin needs, slap on a moisturizer, and good night. If you wear makeup, remove the makeup first, gentle cleanser, and then moisturize. If you want to elevate this, you can use a retinol moisturizer Olay Retinol24 moisturizerso you kill two birds with one stone."
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image courtesy of Danielle Gray
- We Asked A Dermatologist All Your Burning Skincare Questions ›
- All-Natural Ways To Keep Your Skin Super Soft This Fall & Winter ›
Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
