In season two of HBO’s high school drama series Euphoria, Sydney Sweeney’s character Cassie Howard wakes up at 4am every morning and undergoes a grueling multi-step beauty routine, all in the hopes of winning over her best friend’s ex-boyfriend.
In the now-viral scene, Cassie starts her day by scrubbing, depuffing, and sculpting her entire body. At first glance, the regimen seems intense - three types of facial massage tools, a futuristic-looking sheet mask, and even trimming her nose hair.
However, according to skincare experts, Cassie’s beauty regimen would be much more effective if she simply cut it in half.
Charlotte Palermino, a licensed esthetician and CEO of the skincare brand Dieux, told The Independent she had somewhat of an unsettling inner-body experience when she first watched Cassie’s morning ritual.
“The energy made me very uncomfortable, and why she was doing the beauty practices, which was to get noticed,” Palermino told us. “When you’re starting to do beauty practices not for yourself but for somebody else, it’s not fun. And I think that you really sensed that in the execution of it.”
Cassie pulled from a wide range of beauty tools and trinkets throughout the multi-step process, such as a 3D face massaging roller and a gold sculpting bar. While these tools are useful for reducing lymphatic drainage and helping circulation, using them like Cassie does won’t provide you with any significant results.
“If you drink a lot of alcohol, and these teenagers are drinking a lot of alcohol, then you might have some water retention and fluid buildup in the face,” Palermino said. “If that happens, then yes, you’re going to want a facial massage like every single day. The results are temporary as well, right? We’re not getting any long-term results from a lot of these practices, but they are really nice and they can feel really good.”
In her routine, Cassie, or Sweeney, since the actor revealed that she brought the skincare tools from home, specifically uses the Jillian Dempsey Gold Sculpting Bar, which costs $195.
According to Shannon Marks, a licensed esthetician and the owner of Shannon Lee Esthetics in Manhattan, New York, the gold bar’s vibrations mimic the effects of a massage, instantly relaxing facial muscles to release tension.
Next up in her beauty routine, Cassie uses an ice roller across her face and neck. Ice rolling has recently become a popular skincare hack as the process is simple: just roll the cold ice across your face to reduce inflammation and wake up feeling refreshed.
As for whether it works, Palermino said: “Ice rolling first and foremost, it feels good. Is an ice roller going to take 20 years off your face? No. It’s the same way that you would ice an injury, to help calm it. But again, there’s always a balance.” The Latme Ice Roller is available to purchase on Amazon for $17.
The Jenny Patinkin Reusable Sheet Mask was roughly step one million in Cassie’s 4am morning routine, and is priced at $38. This organic, reusable facial mask is an eco-friendly replacement for other single-use, disposable sheet masks. “The Jenny Patinkin mask is made from sustainable bamboo and can be reused using your own serums,” Marks told us.
It also has dual uses, as the sheet mask can be used with warm water to aid in “product absorption and improving moisture retention of the skin,” or it can be chilled with cold water to “increase circulation, reduce inflammation, and leave skin looking refreshed.”
However, while reusable sheet masks are very multi-purpose, by using it to cool her face to reduce inflammation, Cassie is simply repeating the same steps that were already achieved by the ice roller.
“She’s duplicating a ton of steps,” Palermino said. “She could sleep until, like, 5.30 and just cut out half of them and have the same exact routine.”
Individually, each of these products are useful for de-puffing, sculpting, and making the skin look radiant. But viewers should be warned not to take advice from Cassie’s routine, since it neglected the actual skincare products that we know provide actual age-defying and pore-refining results, such as sunscreen, retinol, and niacinamide.
“I think that individually the products are fine,” Palermino said. “Are they the most effective products in skincare? No. But are they really fun to use in skincare? Absolutely.”
Marks also took the opportunity to remember the times in high school when her peers fluffed out their hair a little bit more in the hopes of bumping into a crush in the hallway. But those days are over, and self-care matters more than a loser like Nate Jacobs.
“As we age, we become wiser, and we live to know that self love comes first and isn’t selfish,” she said.
Really, there are no rules when it comes to skincare, as long as you do what works for you - even if Cassie’s routine in Euphoria is a bit tenuous.
However, while reflecting on the initial uncomfortable energy Cassie’s skincare routine gave her, Palermino said she now prefers to think of the regimen as a coping mechanism more than anything else.
“I think that’s a more positive way of looking at it, is that it was something that she could control in a situation that she was not in control of, which was Nate’s behaviour,” she said.
Because what better way to feel like you have your life together than to stock up on a bunch of expensive face masks and hyaluronic acid serums and apply a multi-step skincare routine, right?
