A week after having a nickel-sized chunk of skin surgically removed from my forehead, I went to a party in lower Manhattan with a couple of BandAids stretched across my Aquaphor-slathered sutures. It was my first night out on the town since slicing the dome open, and my head and confidence were both still a bit tender. Unless you’re emulating early-2000s Nelly, adhesive bandages don’t get the same style pass as, say, Starface pimple patches. No matter how much I wished to evade attention, I knew I would have to address my forehead at some point during the night.
So when a friend finally pointed them out and asked me what was up, I told her I had some skin cancer removed—and then downplayed the severity of the condition because I’m reluctant to use the C word to conflate a cluster of mutated basal cells with much more serious types of cancer. Still, I didn’t expect what she said next: “Skin cancer? Damn, that must be embarrassing for someone in Dewy Dudes.”
If you’re a very online, skin care obsessive, chances are you’ve come across the memes my childhood friend Emilio Quezada-Ibañez and I cook up under the moniker Dewy Dudes—a skincare and wellness meme account-turned-podcast that breaks down what’s going on in the male beauty space. We skewer soft-boy toiletry status symbols while also sincerely engaging with them.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
From New Yorkers who bathe with moldy subscription-based showerhead filters to Bravo stars jumping out the Lyft wearing Dieux eye masks for their season reunion, no one is off limits from a little flambéing in our quest to keep up with the ever-changing beauty standards for men (except maybe our brand partners, especially if they’re reading this).
When we started the project around 2019, our aim was to convert scumbro dirtbags into skintellectual SPF addicts, one joke and product recommendation at a time. I certainly wasn’t parading around a glowy money-maker all the time, but at the core of the project was an us-versus-them subtext–a message of “this is what healthy skin looks like,” if you do x, y and z. And I thought I was a part of the in-group, so when my friend teased that I might feel embarrassed about my skin cancer, I wondered if my hesitation to use the C word might be less about stealing cancer survivor valor and more about feeling ashamed of the irony at play: How could someone whose whole schtick is goading dudes into sneaking a few squeezes of their girlfriend’s Unseen Sunscreen wind up with skin cancer?
Three years ago, the dermatologist first diagnosed a small spot on my forehead as basal cell carcinoma (BCC). He informed me it was the most common form of cancer, as well as the most treatable, rarely ever reaching metastasis. I had it surgically cured a month later with a surgery called Mohs, a technique where layers of skin are progressively removed and examined under a microscope until only cancer-free tissue remains, leaving me with a scar that has just now started to fade into my elevens. I was 27 at the time and didn’t think much of it. I thought maybe it was all just a fluke.
Read the full article here
