If your self-care routine starts and ends with face masks, you’re not alone – but you could do with a bit more TLC. After all, today’s most progressive beauty brands take into account that there is skin south of your neck, formulating products for once-overlooked areas like your breasts and butt. Meanwhile, sexual wellness products are being given a makeover, courtesy of young Arab women who grew up around the mentality that feminine health was a taboo and are ready for a new narrative. Welcome to the final frontier of self-care.
Anese
“Serious skincare for not-so-serious babes” is the MO at Anese, translating into cruelty-free products made of ethically sourced ingredients that tend to your boobs, booty, and overall body – think: a gently exfoliating scrub to fade any scars and stretch marks on your breasts, a caffeinated oil to give you a toned and firm posterior, and hydrating elixirs that can be used on the hair and across the body. And with affordable products with cheeky names like ‘Calm Your Tits’ and ‘Bless This Mess’, Anese proves that self-care doesn’t have to be elitist.
Shop Anese here.
Bawdy
Making us beautiful from the bottom up, Bawdy is a self-proclaimed butt-obsessed brand. And we’re here for it. It’s on a mission to direct self-care towards your most valuable – and most neglected – asset, and continues to be best known for its wide range of butt sheet masks that do everything from hydrating and toning to brightening and rejuvenating. Incidentally, Bawdy also created the ‘Nipple & Areola Stick’, a true saviour for nursing moms and even athletes experiencing the likes of irritation, chafing, and dryness.
Shop Bawdy here.
Booby Tape
The world’s first skincare brand specifically for breasts, Booby Tape launched in 2018 with an eponymous tape that can be used to create the effect of a breast lift sans plastic surgery. And it changed the realm of breast and décolletage care as we know it. Today, the global brand is a veritable empire, selling ‘Booby Tape’ in a multitude of shades alongside the likes of nipple covers, a clay-based detoxifying breast mask, and even an overnight treatment designed to correct and prevent chest wrinkles. After all, the chest is one of the first areas to show signs of ageing and sun damage, making it a must-have.
Shop Booby Tape here.
Ketish
Launched this summer, Ketish was founded by an Egyptian-American woman named Emaan Abbass, who was overwhelmed by feelings of shame when she was diagnosed with cancer caused by HPV. Eight years of scans and procedures later, she started to explore the world of intimate health, delving deeper after encountering nothing but disappointing products in the feminine care category – and Ketish was born. The brand’s first ever product is ‘The Quickie’, a pre-play intimate sheet designed to refresh and cleanse not only the delicate skin of your most precious parts but also the rest of your body.
Shop Ketish here.
Mauj
Created by a group of Arab women, Mauj is a bilingual platform dedicated to putting an end to the stigma surrounding the female body by providing access to education, information, dialogue, and acceptance in a region where women are “policed at every marker of womanhood”. Operating anonymously, Mauj addresses the likes of body image, shame around sexual pleasure, the taboos around infertility, and knowledge on one’s period cycle. It recently launched ‘Deem’ – the world’s first vibrator designed by Arab women for Arab women – taking into account everything from design and the pleasure areas it targets to ensuring that it’s discreetly packaged.
Shop Mauj here.
