This $8 Japanese Exfoliating Towel Has My Skin Feeling as Soft as a Baby's Bottom

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Oprah Magazine

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Folks, we're living in divisive times. But there's one thing the vast, beautiful spectrum of humanity can agree on: We all want velvety, bump-less skin that feels like a baby dolphin's, and we want it yesterday. Once upon a time, cavemen and women had to exfoliate their skin with...I don't know, a rock, I guess? (Information on their self-care practices is lacking.)

Today, though, modern technology has given us an invention so vital, it belongs in the pantheon of household design, like those trashcans that close themselves in slow-motion. That product? The exfoliating scrub towel.

If you've ever gotten a body scrub at a Korean spa, you've been sandpapered to within an inch of your life with an exfoliating towel or mitt. There, a scrub mistress covers you in soapy lather and goes to town on you while wormy little ribbons of your dead skin accumulate. But you may not have realized that you could replicate that experience at home, minus the part where you lie nude on a plastic-covered table while a stern woman removes 10 percent of your outer layer.

I first tried an exfoliating towel while living in Tokyo. I’d gotten in the habit of visiting the omnipresent sentos (public baths) once or twice a week, sudsing myself in a tiled room next to elderly Japanese ladies and rinsing clean, then soaking in a bath hot enough to brew a strong cup of tea.

Photo credit: Molly Simms
Photo credit: Molly Simms

I quickly noticed that most of the women carried long sheets of plastic-mesh fabric the color of Easter eggs. And after scoping out the selection at local drugstores, I became a scrub-towel connoisseur, trying enough variations over a few years that I started to keep a mental tally of which got the job done...and which were essentially washcloths with an attitude problem.

Luckily, you don’t have to fly 14 hours to buy an exfoliating towel—there’s a cornucopia available online. And in a nod to ’50s-era gender roles, many are specifically marketed toward men or women. Now, the above butch mf’er is obviously meant for dudes only, which is communicated both by the 42-point-font-sized “FOR MEN,” and by the fact that the text is designed to look like a steel sword being hit by light from an interrogation lamp. What was this towel’s crime? Being too TOUGH.

Photo credit: Molly Sims
Photo credit: Molly Sims

This one here, on the other hand, is clearly for a tender lady—one who needs only to buff some pollen off her back after wandering through a field of peonies. What does she do for a living? Unclear, but we can assume she wears flesh-colored pantyhose while doing it.

Photo credit: Molly Sims
Photo credit: Molly Sims

While the latter version is heartbreakingly cute, if you’re in the market for advanced dead-skin removal, you’ll want to go with the men’s option. I’m fond of the SUPER HARD towel by Salux—but honestly, you’d be fine with any Asian exfoliating towel that says “men,” “hard” or has a picture of, like, a monster truck on it. If you feel like you need to work up to that level of harshness, try one of the feminine versions first, then move on to the harder stuff later. (Think of them as gateway towels.) For maximum buffing, just squeeze some liquid body wash onto your towel and attack your limbs like they said something rude about your grandmother. The result? The cleanest, softest, freshest skin you can fathom.

“My loofah/grainy scrub/washcloth does the same thing,” I hear you arguing dismissively. You beautiful, beautiful fool. None of those give you the depth of skin removal that an exfoliating towel does. Comparatively, a loofah is like a gust of sandy wind wafting across your legs. A grainy scrub doesn’t give your problem areas the concentrated attention they need—plus it globs off down the drain as soon as water hits it. And to borrow a phrase from the internet, a washcloth simply does not have the range.

I’ve already rhapsodized about the transformative power of exfoliating towels to most of my coworkers. (“They hurt pretty bad, but in a fun way…?”) Like the infamous Baby Foot Peel, they appeal most to those who are willing to endure some discomfort to achieve the buttery-soft skin of a toddler—or Jennifer Lopez.

So if you flinch at the slightest tweezing, exfoliating towels probably aren’t for you. But if you have the strength—and masochism—to endure them, you’ll be amply rewarded. Just soap up, dig deep, and get ready to scrub.


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