Hot Beauty Tip: Replace All Your Soap With Luxurious Cascades of Bacterial Mist

We know all about the no-shampoo life; the New York Times does us one better by spending a month forgoing normal hygiene while testing out AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist, a bottled-bacteria product conceived when its founder looked at horses and “wondered whether the animals managed their sweat by engaging in dirt bathing.” It gets dark for a minute:

People began asking if I’d “done something new” with my hair, which turned a full shade darker for being coated in oil that my scalp wouldn’t stop producing. I slept with a towel over my pillow and found myself avoiding parties and public events. Mortified by my body odor, I kept my arms pinned to my sides, unless someone volunteered to smell my armpit. One friend detected the smell of onions. Another caught a whiff of “pleasant pot.”

But then:

My skin began to change for the better. It actually became softer and smoother, rather than dry and flaky, as though a sauna’s worth of humidity had penetrated my winter-hardened shell. And my complexion, prone to hormone-related breakouts, was clear. For the first time ever, my pores seemed to shrink. As I took my morning “shower” — a three-minute rinse in a bathroom devoid of hygiene products — I remembered all the antibiotics I took as a teenager to quell my acne. How funny it would be if adding bacteria were the answer all along.

[NYTimes]