Why I Went to a Comedy Show and Thought About My Skin

Last week I went to a comedy show. A genuinely funny one — smart funny, the kind that makes you laugh and then sit with something uncomfortable after.

Rachael Hornbuckle is a comedian who also works as an injectable nurse. Her show, Skin Deep and Meaningful, was part of Melbourne Comedy Festival — 30 seats, the Chinese Museum, full house. What good comedy does is shine a light on something you hadn't quite named yet. She did that.

Her observation was this: since the pandemic, cosmetic procedures have skyrocketed. She links it directly to Zoom — all those hours staring at ourselves in little boxes under brutal lighting, noticing every line we'd never had time to see before. Young women are coming in for "preventative" work. Before they even have the problem.

When she said it, something clicked for me. I spend a lot of time on Zoom — it comes with running a business. And long before I heard Rachael's theory, I'd already developed a habit: I turn my own screen off. Not to disengage. The opposite, actually. I want to be present with the people I'm talking to and the ideas we're working through. The moment I can see myself, I'm assessing my appearance instead of doing my job.

I hadn't connected those two things until I sat in that room.

Here's the thing I can't get past: we've never been more obsessed with living longer.

We want the decades. But we also want to erase every visible sign that we're getting them.

I'm mid-40s. I've got lines. My face looks different from what it did ten years ago. And sitting in that room watching Rachael talk, I realised I wasn't sad about that. I was sad about the pressure to be sad about it.

I didn't start Australian Natural Soap Company to fight ageing. I started it because I believed real ingredients treated real skin better than synthetic ones. Olive oil doesn't promise to reverse anything. It just treats your skin kindly, right now, as it is. That was always the philosophy — nourishment, not correction.

The freedom I've found isn't in giving up on caring for my skin. It's in deciding what I'm caring for it for. Not to chase something younger. Just to look after it. The way you'd look after anything you wanted to last.

Maybe the most radical thing we can do is let ourselves age.

Not fight it, not hide it — just let it happen, with skin that's been treated kindly along the way.

Soapy hugs, Emma xx