A Whole-Person Approach to Skin + Wellness
“You have to challenge beauty sometimes. If we all chase youth or our idea of what beauty is, we’re only going to be disappointed and maybe a little bit sad.”
— Pamela Anderson
Pamela Anderson probably isn’t the first person who comes to mind when you think about changing the conversation around beauty. And yet, in recent years, she has become one of the most visible examples of it.
Her decision to attend Paris Fashion Week without makeup in 2023 sparked an enormous amount of attention, precisely because it happened in a setting where polished, highly constructed beauty is practically part of the uniform. Since then, Anderson has continued appearing publicly with a much more pared-back approach to beauty, including a makeup-free Glamour cover and a 2024 Glamour Women of the Year feature centered on self-acceptance and moving away from the pressure to always appear perfectly polished.
For years, women have been given a complicated relationship with their skin. We’re encouraged to look youthful, polished, healthy, and put together, while simultaneously being told not to care too much about how we look. Try to change the signs of aging and you’re “fighting nature.” Decide not to change them and you’re expected to simply accept whatever happens.
That’s why I believe skin care deserves to be considered differently.
Your Skin Is More Than What You See
Your skin is not simply the surface other people see. It is a living, responsive part of you—one that protects you from the outside world, participates in immune defense, helps regulate temperature, allows you to sense your environment, and continually responds to what is happening both outside and within your body.
Its appearance is one expression of all of that activity. But it isn’t the whole story.
The condition of your skin can be influenced by your sleep, stress, hormones, nutrition, environment, medications, lifestyle, nervous system, treatment history, and the products and procedures you use.
Your Skin Is Processing Information
When you come to Aviva, I’m not only looking at what your skin looks like that day. I’m considering your skin history, how you have responded to previous treatments, your current home regimen, your goals, and what may be influencing your skin.
That context can change how I approach your treatment.
This is also why skin care can’t always be thought of as a single treatment or a quick fix. Often clients come to me with skin concerns that are years - even decades in the making. Chronic stress, persistent exposure to inflammatory triggers, bad lifestyle habits, and overall abuse and neglect of our skin means allowing time for professional care on a regular basis—even monthly.
Your Nervous System Is Part of the Picture, Too
Clients often come in after fighting traffic, coming from a meeting that ran over, checking their phones, thinking about what they need to do next, and carrying the demands of the day right through the treatment-room door. Your nervous system doesn’t necessarily switch off just because you’ve arrived for an appointment.
The skin and nervous system are closely connected through complex signaling pathways and sensory networks. Stress and nervous-system activity can influence processes such as inflammation, barrier function, blood flow, wound healing, and other aspects of skin physiology.
That is why I think about more than which ingredients or modalities I’m using. The pace of a treatment, therapeutic touch, product textures, temperature, scent, sound, and the overall sensory environment can all be part of creating the right conditions for care. (See full article The Neuroscience of Glowing Skin: How Facials Calm Your Nervous System and Boost Immunity)
But relaxation is not the alternative to corrective skin care. It is one part of it.
Whole-Person Care Still Requires Strategy
If we're working on concerns such as pigmentation, textural changes, collagen loss, acne, or signs of premature aging, meaningful improvement often requires an intentional treatment plan, appropriate intensity, consistency, and time.
That distinction is at the heart of the Aviva SKN Method:
Stabilize → Kickstart → Nurture
These phases aren’t rigid steps that every client follows in exactly the same way. Your skin may move between them depending on its condition, goals, treatment history, and what is happening in your life.
Your Treatment Doesn’t End When You Leave
And then there’s everything that happens between appointments.
Your skin spends far more time at home than it does in my treatment room, which is why your home regimen is part of your treatment—not an afterthought.
When you leave Aviva, you’ll usually receive a treatment summary with specific aftercare instructions: what I applied, what I want you to use at home, how often to use it, and sometimes what to temporarily avoid.
If you ever get home and think, “Wait…what did she say?” just ask.
If your skin responds differently than expected, or you’re unsure when to restart a product, you can reach out. I’m happy to clarify. You shouldn’t have to guess your way through your aftercare.
What I do in the studio matters. What you do at home matters.
Skin Care Is Personal
The part of Pamela Anderson’s message that resonates most with me is that skin care doesn’t have to be about erasing every wrinkle or maintaining a particular version of yourself to feel beautiful.
It's about understanding what your skin needs, why it needs it, and what makes sense for you personally.
That’s the kind of care I want Aviva to provide: thoughtful, personalized skin therapy that considers the whole person.