what to do with $2000
Part one: the professionals weigh in
Sometimes when I’m interviewing someone I will ask wildcard questions that just pop into my head. They often do not go well. Like, it turns out a certain Serious Actor didn’t love the time I blurted out, “Do you believe in ghosts” while we were having coffee in a park. This is probably also why hanging out with me can be incredibly fun or incredibly draining.
A little while ago I was interviewing Dr. Muneeb Shah, who is a dermatologist with over 17 million followers on TikTok alone. He fields questions from people all the time and the one that popped in my head was what he, at age 37, would do for himself with his own $2000 for the most bang for his buck. $2000 seemed like enough money that he could recommend something a little glitzy beyond retinoids and sunscreen and, like, a water filter, but not so much money that it’s the stuff of pure imagination, such as checking into Lanserhof for a month or getting a full body lift.
I am also at that part of winter—in weather and in life—where my face is both clogged and dry at once, where I find new scaly patches on my body daily, where everyday there are new horrors both major and minor in the news. I’m over it. Aren’t we all? And you know what I love more than anything? Throwing money at a problem!
After I asked Dr. Shah I decided to ask a few more of the skin professionals I really admire and trust and, maybe most crucially, look good: Dr. Melissa Doft, a plastic surgeon for women who wear The Row (her office is close to their boutique, too); Lisa Goodman, who started Goodskin, a clinic where her whole thing looking a little undone and doing a lot of her training in Europe; and Carrie Lindsey, who is a little older than me and yet looks about 20 years younger than me and is New York City’s facial and skin and brow queen; Athena Hewett, whose line Monastery I can never get enough of. The question was what they would do with $2000 to feel and look better. It could be science-forward, it could be something to make their skin look good, it could be just a favorite lipstick, it could be something more woo-woo wellness. Whatever they swear by that actually works.
And then next week we’ll hear from the 100ish people who weighed in (and counting, and feel free to send over your answers as I am still compiling) who are not necessarily in the beauty industry, but rather friends, strangers, celebrities, yoga teachers, investigative journalists, part-time foot models, and on and one. Kind of a reverse mailbag with an intriguing range of ideas.
Note: I told people it’s fine to promote themselves or their friends if that’s what they’d really do because professionals I’ve come to know tend to use their own products or treatments or lasers. I’m not telling them to rule those things out if that’s what they gravitate to.
First, Dr Muneeb Shah, who started this thought exercise:
