A few weeks ago, I had a professional makeup artist do my makeup. (No, this ain’t a regular occurrence—it was for my book cover photo shoot, and I needed to look like something other than a woman who’d been wrestling calves all morning.)
As she was working her magic with brushes and whatnot, she kept commenting on my face. Said she rarely sees skin that’s so evenly and deeply moisturized, especially for someone living in one of the driest, most wind-blown places this side of Mars.
(Considering I live in Wyoming where the wind could strip paint off a barn, this was high praise indeed.)
So which fancy, high-tech modern skincare line do I use to get such remarkable results? Some expensive cream that costs more than a good milk cow?
None of the above.
For the last 18 months or so, I’ve used nothing on my face but beef fat—aka beef tallow—and I’m here to tell you it works better than anything I’ve ever tried.
When I tell people this, I hear a lot of “ick!” responses, like I just suggested they rub roadkill on their cheeks. I get it—the thought of using animal fat on our skin can seem stranger than socks on a rooster.
But if we can step outside of our modern mindset for just a hot minute, it makes a ton of old-fashioned sense.
How did we do {fill in the blank} before industrialization told us otherwise?
This question has been rattling around my brain like a marble in a mason jar lately, and answering it leads down some fascinating rabbit holes.
For thousands of years—and I mean thousands—people used animal fats on their skin. They were readily available, effective, and didn’t require a chemistry degree to understand the ingredient list.
But then the industrial mindset came bulldozing in like a freight train, telling us there were better, fancier, more “civilized” ways to moisturize our skin.
Most of those new ways involved either seed oils (think soybean or sunflower oil that have to be grown with more pesticides than a chemical plant) or mineral oil (which is basically a petroleum byproduct—you know, the stuff we put in our cars).
Sure, seed oils require massive amounts of chemical fertilizers that harm the soil, and yeah, mineral oil is literally made from crude oil, and obviously you need to add a cocktail of preservatives so they don’t go rancid on the shelf…
But OF COURSE these things were still better than animal fats… right?
Right?
As a result, we’ve ended up with a 49-billion-dollar beauty industry in the USA. (That’s a real number, not something I pulled out of thin air like a magic trick.)
But even in our high-tech world, the old, simple ways still work.
And skincare is no exception to this rule.
Here’s why I’ve switched exclusively to beef tallow, and why it makes more sense than a pocket on a shirt:
→ It’s sustainable as all get-out. Since beef tallow is a byproduct of the beef industry, using it means we’re not letting parts of the animal go to waste. While I’m not completely opposed to coconut oil or other tropical oils, those aren’t exactly local for most of us—unless you’ve got palm trees growing in your backyard, which would be a sight to see in Wyoming.
→ It’s skincare you can technically grow yourself. Try growing your own coconut oil or shea butter in Montana. I’ll wait. Beef tallow or lard can be harvested by anyone who raises animals, or you can get it from local producers who know what they’re doing.
→ It’s really, really good for our skin. This stuff is loaded with vitamins A, D, E, and K, plus something called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) that has anti-inflammatory benefits. Many folks use tallow to manage symptoms of eczema and psoriasis—conditions that expensive store-bought creams often can’t touch.
→ One size fits all. It works for hands, faces, under-eyes, you name it. The days of needing an entire bathroom cabinet full of different lotions and potions are over, folks. This is skincare that doesn’t require a flow chart to figure out.
Sometimes I make my own tallow balms (and I’ve got a recipe on the blog if you’re feeling ambitious), but honestly, I like Toups & Co balms even better than my own concoctions, especially their vanilla and almond scent that smells good enough to eat.
They use tallow from grass-fed cattle, blend it with a little olive oil, and that’s about it besides the natural scents. It’s creamy, smells amazing, and makes my face glow like I’ve been living right.
My skincare routine?
I apply the balm in the morning after I wash my face, and then again at night after I shower. I wash my face using either the oil cleansing method or mild castile soap—nothing fancy, nothing that requires a chemistry degree to pronounce.
That’s it. Simpler than Sunday morning.
And it works better than anything I’ve ever used, even though I’m not using a single “high-tech” beauty product.
The makeup artist wasn’t just being polite—my skin really is more moisturized and healthier than it’s been in years. All because I went back to something our great-grandmothers knew worked, instead of chasing after the latest miracle cream advertised on Instagram.
It’s another beautiful example of how old-fashioned ways just make sense, like using a cast iron skillet instead of some non-stick pan that’ll be in a landfill in two years.
Here’s the thing about old ways:
They became old ways because they worked. Our ancestors weren’t stupid—they figured out what was effective through trial and error, and they passed that knowledge down because it was worth keeping.
We’ve gotten so caught up in thinking that newer automatically means better that we’ve forgotten some of the simplest, most effective solutions were right there all along.
So maybe it’s time to start asking that question about other areas of our lives: How did we do this before industrialization told us otherwise?
You might be surprised by what you find when you start digging into the old ways. Sometimes the best innovations are actually the oldest ones, just waiting for us to remember why they worked in the first place.
