I’m kind of a lazy person. I’m also always looking for new ways in which I can afford to be lazier, in the sense that I’m curious about how my daily routines can be simplified; I want to know which unitasker tools or items can expand in their functionality, and how I, especially as a shopping writer, can machete chop my way through layers of product marketing ploys to find all the stuff that deserves a permanent place on my shelf.
That is why I cook with this olive oil — and I also use it in the shower.
Yep, that’s right; one bottle lives on my kitchen counter, and another next to my conditioner. The jump from frying pan to body moisturizer started several years ago, after an appointment with a talented facialist-masseuse left my legs feeling deeply hydrated. As someone who has always struggled with dry skin, it felt like the heavens parted when the specialist told me that she simply used regular old olive oil (she swore by Trader Joe’s and Pompeian’s EVOOs, specifically, for their quality and affordability) to massage my legs at the end of the spa day package. When I texted this to my friends with all the fervor of a 1920s paperboy, some responded with skepticism, but quite a few said some version of yes, duh, welcome to the club.
For as long as olive oil has been around, people have been using it on their skin. The ancient Greeks considered it liquid gold, dousing it on their Olympians who, in turn, also competed for coveted storage pots of the stuff. Dermatologists also recommend it; Amy Kassouf tells the Cleveland Clinic that that it “can be a great moisturizer for people with dry or sensitive skin,” which is probably why slathering a tablespoon of the stuff on my body after a shower has been working out so well for me over the years. There even have been promising studies about how the application of olive oil can help minor cuts and scrapes heal faster.
If I was a spoiled and delulu noble in the court of Versailles, I might insist on using the 18th-century equivalent of Flamingo Estate’s $82 olive oil as a body moisturizer. But one of the best things about my Pompeian olive oil fealty is that it checks off both my need for a great, affordable cooking olive oil and a body moisturizer.
When I’m home, I’ll usually divide a bottle into two vessels, funneling half into a plastic squeeze tip bottle to take in the shower. But it’s nice to know that when I’m traveling, I can almost always find a bottle of the stuff at every echelon of grocery store.
I have sung the praises of Pompeian before for another reasons: its unbothered aesthetics. In a marketing landscape of increasingly millennial-marketed blob art-maxxed branding, Pompeian feels refreshingly, unassumingly 90s-retro in its graphic design. One of my go-to lucid dream spaces echoes the landscape of golden, rolling hills and cypress trees depicted on the label of its dark green bottles. And when I add its Light Taste EVOO to my cart, I relax my shoulders a bit knowing that this is not an over-hyped bottle of influencer snake oil that will jump to make incongruous collaborations with hair care brands or footwear companies (granted, the Chocos x Waffle House sandals are kind of cool). This is the kind of olive oil beloved by my Midwestern aunties who still use Hotmail. It is an amphora of sincerity, which makes it even more enticing.
I’m not going to linger on my EVOO soapbox for much longer, especially as someone who is not a certified derm, but if you are someone whose skin veers on the dry side and doesn’t want to spend $85 on body oil, this can be a pretty sweet hack, whether you’re concerned with drizzling it over burrata or your bum.
Check out Pompeian’s line of olive oils here.
