If you’ve spent any time trying to navigate skincare during pregnancy or postpartum, you know the feeling. You pick up a product you’ve used for years, flip it over, and suddenly you’re in a spiral. Is this safe? Should I switch? What does “clean” even mean and why does everything I own apparently not qualify?
Dr. Aegean Chan, a board-certified dermatologist and mother of three, has a lot to say about that spiral. Most of it is reassuring and frankly, super refreshing. She’s spent years watching the fear-mongering machine work on her own patients, her friends at the playground, and herself, during a decade of cycling through pregnancy, postpartum, and breastfeeding. Her conclusion: the skincare industry has been profiting off maternal anxiety, the “clean beauty” movement is largely unscientific, and most of us are doing significantly more to our skin than we need to.
She’s also, for what it’s worth, done something about it. More Than Nine, her new minimalist skincare line built specifically for the motherhood arc, launches this month. But that’s almost beside the point. What Dr. Chan really wants to talk about is why your bathroom cabinet got so complicated in the first place — and why the solution is probably simpler and cheaper than anything currently in it.
Why motherhood is the moment most of us overcomplicate skincare
I’ll be transparent. I’ve been a skincare obsessive for most of my adult life. I’ve cycled through serums and acids and elaborate routines with the dedication of someone training for a sport. Then came a bout of eczema, a couple of genuinely alarming eyelid situations, and a slow reckoning with the fact that I had been doing too much. My skin was not grateful for my effort. It was inflamed by it.
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So when Dr. Chan and I sat down to talk, I was already receptive to her argument. What I wasn’t fully prepared for was how sharp her critique of the broader industry would be.
Skincare, she says, has become homework. “I have multiple friends, multiple moms at the playground, who tell me they’ve had ‘fix my routine’ on their to-do list for six months because it feels like too much to even dive into.” The irony is that most of what’s been added to that list wasn’t necessary to begin with.
The “clean beauty” problem nobody is talking about honestly
Dr. Chan is particularly pointed about the fear-mongering that has come to define the beauty and skincare industry, and especially how it plays out for pregnant and postpartum women, who are already primed for anxiety about what they’re putting on and in their bodies.
“Fear-mongering in skincare has become standard,” she says. “Scaring your consumer has become a kind of gold standard. And the ‘clean beauty’ label — it literally means nothing. There’s no data to suggest that clean or natural products are safer than well-formulated conventional ones. The dose is what matters. But brands have figured out that fear sells.”
She’s particularly pointed about parabens, which have been so thoroughly demonized that “paraben-free” has become a selling point across the industry. The science, she says, doesn’t support the fear. The family of parabens commonly used in formulation are among the safest preservatives available, with low allergy rates and a long track record. “They’ve won the non-contact allergen of the year award from dermatologists multiple times,” she says. “As in — this is a great preservative, stop swapping it out.”
When brands reformulated to remove parabens, many replaced them with alternatives that have significantly higher reaction rates. Dr. Chan says she sees more contact dermatitis in her practice from natural and clean products than from conventional ones — natural deodorants especially, where unstable essential oils convert over time into highly allergenic molecules. “I tell people: just switch to the Dove sensitive. It’s fine.”
The same cycle plays out around chemical sunscreens during pregnancy, where fear has outrun the evidence in ways that have real consequences. “There’s been a lot of messaging that you can’t use chemical sunscreens while pregnant, and there’s literally no good data to support that,” she says. The problem is that mineral sunscreens simply don’t work on all skin tones. For women with deeper complexions, “paraben-free” or mineral-only recommendations aren’t just unhelpful — they effectively tell those women not to wear sunscreen at all. “You’re actually doing people a disservice,” she says. “They feel like there are no options, and then they just don’t wear it.”
The ecosystem sustaining all of this, she says, is a closed loop. Brands blame consumer demand. Consumers say they were told this is what they should want. Retailers enforce clean ingredient lists as a condition of shelf space, which shapes what brands formulate, which shapes what consumers believe they need. “I don’t know how to break that cycle,” she says. “My part is just to be transparent, give people the information, and trust them to think for themselves.”
What pregnancy-safe skincare actually means — and what it doesn’t
Some ingredients do warrant real caution during pregnancy: retinoids and hydroquinone are legit off the table. But Dr. Chan is careful to distinguish evidence-based caution from precautionary marketing. “If you say something is pregnancy safe, unless you’re testing it on a pregnant woman — which you can’t — you can’t actually make that claim,” she says. “What I want is for women to understand the rationale, to have the information, so they can make their own decisions. Not to be scared into buying something.”
More Than Nine’s site includes an educational hub called “Is This Okay?” where you can search ingredient and safety questions and get vetted, accessible answers. It exists because reliable information on this is currently scattered across the ACOG website, the American Academy of Dermatology, and clinical databases that most new mothers are not going to navigate at 11pm with a baby on their chest.
Her formulas are reviewed by an independent toxicologist to confirm levels are well below safety margins. And they lean on ingredients that have been proven effective for decades without needing a rebrand. Glycerin, for instance, is central to both the cleanser and moisturizer. “Classic ingredients don’t get enough credit,” she says. “We know glycerin works. It’s cost-effective, it makes a formula feel great, and it’s genuinely one of the best things you can use for hydration — especially postpartum, when so many women find their skin has gotten significantly drier and more sensitive.”
On the trend side, she’ll admit to one mild heresy: she’s not convinced vitamin C earns its place in most mothers’ routines. “I think a lot of dermatologists say you have to use it, and I find that people really struggle being consistent with it because they’re not seeing immediate results. Personally, I can’t keep it in my routine. The mornings are chaos.” The antioxidant benefits are real, she says. But for a woman who’s already stretched, it tends to be the first thing that falls off — and she’d rather you be consistent with the four things that will actually move the needle.
Her actual routine (it’s shorter than you think)
Dr. Chan’s own routine is about as stripped down as it gets. Cleanser in the shower. Moisturizer. Sunscreen — Korean formula, two finger-lengths, non-negotiable. On a good morning, a glycolic and melisyl serum she’s been experimenting with for hyperpigmentation, maybe twice a week. In the evening: cleanser again, an OTC retinoid a few nights a week, moisturizer. “Not exciting,” she says. “But it works.”
I tried the products. Here’s what my skin thought.
Since our conversation, I’ve been using three of the More Than Nine products (each under $30 bucks!), and my skin — which has become increasingly opinionated in recent years — is not complaining. The Take a Sec Cleanser is a creamy pump formula that foams gently and takes off a full face of SPF and makeup without leaving that tight, stripped feeling that sends you reaching for three follow-up products. A little goes a long way. The Look Alive Exfoliator is a powder you mix with water, which gives you control over intensity and is nothing like the aggressive scrubs many of us grew up with. (Millennials who survived the St. Ives Apricot Scrub, rest assured that you don’t have to slough off half an inch of skin to actually exfoliate.) The Go-To Moisturizer is light but has staying power. It’s the kind of formula that works in the heat of July and won’t leave you feeling parched in February.
Dr. Chan spent close to a decade cycling through pregnancy, postpartum, and breastfeeding before the line launched. “Motherhood is long,” she says. “The phases all blend together. You’re not going to stop and say, ‘I’m no longer pregnant, let me rework my skincare.’ I wanted something that could just carry you through.”
There’s a version of that sentence that applies to a lot of things we overcomplicate for mothers. Skincare is a reasonable place to start.
