Are you a self tanner? Or maybe you’re a combination self tanner and sun basker. Whatever the case may be, if you want to get an even sunless tan, then you need some sort of exfoliating sponge, and the loofah probably fits that bill best, since it is a natural exfoliant and gentle enough so that it doesn’t rip up the skin, yet abrasive enough so that it does slough off dead skin cells as well as old self tanner or uneven spots that can mess up a perfectly good sunless tan.
I couldn’t figure out why I get getting blotchy, and my sister, who’s a self tanner extraordinaire, told me that I had to exfoliate every single time I showered if I intended to put on self tanner that night or day, because if I didn’t then I would definitely get streaky. She must have perfected it and figured that out over the years she’s been self tanning, because I thought you only had to exfoliate once in a while and still be able to get a good self tan by doing it that way, but apparently it’s more often ideally.
And, it works. I started exfoliating every time before a self tan, even if it was just with a gradual self tanner, one of the ones that builds itself slowly over time, and only delivers a little bit of DHA every time, instead of mega dosing your skin with it to give you a dramatic color change right away. Actually, either way, you want to exfoliate generously, but more so if you’re going for a big change in color, since most likely at that point you’re not very dark anyways, you won’t be sloughing off any kind of self tanner anyways.
If you do a gradual self tan, and apply it often because it is so weak, you don’t want to vigorously exfoliate, just very lightly, so that you do not rub off too much and inadvertently make yourself blotchy, since that’s counterproductive to what you’re trying to do, which is get an all-over, even sunless tan, without blotches or uneven buildup.
