The Beauty Treatment Shortlist
Cool things that are worth it right now.
There are officially too many beauty treatments. Maybe? Probably.
Every few months there is another miracle machine, injectable, laser, collagen stimulator or treatment with a vaguely scientific name promising tighter skin, better texture, smaller pores, more collagen and ideally the face you had five years ago.
As your faithful anonymous bestie, we have put in the work trying a lot of them. Some have become permanent fixtures in the rotation, some have done absolutely nothing for us, and some are currently sitting very high on the list of things we need to try next.
So here is our extremely scientific rundown, based largely on experimentation, preference, the results we have actually seen and little to nothing else.
Our filter at this point is pretty simple: we are most interested in treatments that make the skin itself better, continue working after you leave the appointment and do not leave you having to hide away from everyone for 5-10 business days.
Microneedling remains one of our favorites
SkinPen gets talked about like it is its own mysterious treatment, but it is microneedling. SkinPen is simply one device used to perform it.
We love traditional microneedling and keep coming back to it because the payoff feels very inside out. Tiny controlled injuries kick off the skin’s natural repair process and stimulate new collagen, which can gradually improve texture, pores, fine lines and acne scarring.
The important word is gradually.
This is not necessarily the treatment where you leave one appointment and suddenly understand the hype. For us, four or five treatments is when you really start appreciating what it can do, and the results continue to develop because collagen remodeling takes time. It is a game changer, but you have to be patient enough to let it become one.
We also personally prefer traditional microneedling over RF microneedling. That does not mean we are anti-radiofrequency across the board, as you are about to find out, but when it comes to microneedling specifically, we like to keep things simple.
A single appointment can give you a nice glow. A real series is where you start getting the actual benefit.
XERF is very high on our list
Our next experiment is XERF. The appointments are already scheduled.
XERF is a newer Korean radiofrequency treatment that uses two frequencies of monopolar RF to heat different depths of tissue, with the goal of tightening skin and stimulating collagen without needles or meaningful downtime.
And yes, part of our interest is extremely scientific: if Korean clinics are doing it, we would like to know more.
Korea has been ahead of the U.S. on enough beauty technology that when something gains traction there before making its way here, we pay attention.
XERF also fits neatly into the kind of aesthetics we are most interested in right now. The goal is not to dramatically alter anything. It is collagen, firmness, maintenance and results that continue developing over time.
We have not tried it yet, so this is not an endorsement. It is simply high enough on the list that we already have the appointments booked.
We will report back.
Not every collagen machine deserves the hype
This is where we start becoming difficult.
There are a lot of energy-based treatments being marketed around collagen stimulation and skin tightening right now, and the price tag does not always correlate with how impressed we are by the result.
Sofwave, for example, has never particularly convinced us. The real-world before-and-afters and results we have seen have not been compelling enough to make it something we are eager to spend our treatment budget on, especially at the price.
That does not mean nobody gets a result from it. It just means we would rather put that money toward something where the payoff feels more obvious.
Beauty technology moves incredibly fast, and sometimes the smartest thing you can do is wait long enough to see which machines people are still talking about two years later.
Not every launch needs to become an appointment.
We still believe in lasers
Lasers remain one of the most reliably productive categories for us, especially when the goal is improving pigment, sun damage, texture or overall tone.
The tricky part is that “laser” has become such a broad term that it barely tells you anything anymore. Different devices work at different wavelengths and depths and are meant to address completely different concerns, which is why choosing one based solely on whatever happens to be trending on TikTok is probably not the move.
This is also one of those categories where the provider matters just as much as the machine.
Personally, we keep coming back to Laser Genesis and pico lasers, and we are big fans of the sister dermatologist and plastic surgeon duo at @rabachaesthetics, who do a signature CO2 “dusting” that hits the sweet spot between doing something meaningful and requiring you to disappear from society afterward.
That is increasingly what we want from lasers in general. Treatments we can work into the year as maintenance instead of one enormous annual event that requires a week of strategic indoor living.
At minimum, these are quarterly go-tos for us.
Injectables are getting more interesting when they do less
We are obviously not pretending Botox and filler have disappeared. They have not, and neither have we.
Our toxin preference has changed, though. Xeomin is currently our go-to. It takes a little longer to kick in for us, but once it does, we love the result enough that it has officially earned repeat-appointment status.
More broadly, the conversation around injectables has become much more interesting as the focus has moved toward skin quality, movement, structure and collagen stimulation. There seems to be much less appetite for the era when filler itself was the look.
That is part of why treatments like Sculptra and Radiesse are interesting. They are biostimulatory, meaning part of the appeal is encouraging your own collagen production over time rather than relying entirely on immediate added volume.
Even hyaluronic acid injectables are being used differently. Skinvive, for example, is intended to improve hydration and smoothness rather than noticeably change the shape of the face.
The common denominator across all of these is increasingly the same: ideally, the treatment is difficult to identify.
You look better. Nobody can quite explain why.
The best results are getting harder to spot
That is probably the biggest shift in what we are interested in right now.
The technology keeps getting more complicated, but our wishlist has actually become simpler: better skin, smoother texture, more collagen, a little more firmness and a face that still very much looks like your own.
We would rather commit to a series of microneedling treatments and watch the skin gradually improve than chase every machine promising an instant lift. We are trying XERF because the technology is interesting enough to earn an appointment. We still love a well-chosen laser, and we are increasingly interested in injectables when the result is subtle enough that nobody is thinking about the injectable.
There will always be another device, injection or treatment promising to be the next big thing, and obviously we will continue investigating because someone has to.
But at this point, knowing what is actually worth repeating, and what you can comfortably skip, might be the most useful beauty information of all.
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