‘They Always Say the Younger You Start, the Better’

Every weekday, Carson Bradley wakes up to the sound of her alarm at 4 a.m. to squeeze in enough time for her “basic” skin-care routine, which usually takes around 25 minutes, before her day begins. She begins by setting the mood, putting on a silk pink robe, lighting a scented candle, and playing music, usually something like Lana Del Rey, in her brightly lit bathroom. Then, she gets to work: double-cleansing and applying toner, vitamin C serum, glycolic acid, and salicylic acid, finishing off with two different types of moisturizer. “I use a lot of glycolic acid, because it’s texture smoothing,” she explains. “And I use an excessive amount of moisturizer, even though I don’t have dry skin — it plumps your skin.”

Bradley does all of this again before bedtime, with the addition of a few more eye creams and patches and an over-the-counter retinol. Occasionally, she’ll use a gua sha.

Despite what it sounds like, Bradley isn’t doing this to combat existing wrinkles. She’s 14 years old.

On this day 209 years ago, a 15-foot-high wave of beer cascaded through the streets of a London neighborhood, killing eight people. Louise Glück, remembered by writers and poets who knew, read, and studied with her. Queer icons of classical antiquity you didn’t learn about in school. Even Scholastic Book Fairs aren’t safe from book bans. How Lunchables ended up on school lunch trays. And a morning-after pill for preventing STIs is closer than ever to entering mainstream medicine.

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