MetroMan: Face to face

Christine first cleanses Wayne's skin to eliminate surface dirt.

Award-winning beauty therapist Christine Jones, of About Me beauty therapy clinic, doesn't do "fluffy facials". She does the "Rolls Royce of skincare treatments". So we put her to the test on our media consultant, Wayne Michell.

"I call traditional facials fluffies, because they're exactly that," said Christine. "You're moving product around on the skin and even the order of products that they teach you - cleanse then tone then exfoliate - it's all in the wrong order. Once you have hit massage, how is the mask going to penetrate after that? So there are a few discrepancies in there."

Once Wayne had stripped down to the bare essentials, and Christine explained the procedure she was going to do, he was tucked up in a duvet on the therapy table, eagerly waiting to be pampered.

And on went the acids ...

"On the top layers of your skin, you naturally have hyaluronic acid. And lactic acid is attracted to hyaluronic acid. And hyaluronic acid, in turn, attracts a thousand times its weight in water, so we are pulling up all our free water levels and this makes you look younger. As it's pulling up all your free water levels, you pull out all your wrinkles. You might just feel a slight prickle," she said.

Christine applied a pro alpha 1 removal and enzyme therapy treatment to Wayne's face and décolletage.

"The majority of skin these days is essential fatty acid-deficient. We don't get enough from our food anymore, and we don't make enough in our bodies, which means a lot more of us present with high colouring, rashes, itching, acne, dermatitis. With enzyme therapy, what it does is it takes all of your dead skin cells and breaks them down, turns them into a weak acid and flushes them out of your lymphatic system. So we are going to preform reverse osmosis."

As Wayne drifted off to sleep, Christine showed me some dramatic before-and-after shots of clients that had the enzyme treatments, and talked me through the similarities of men's and women's skin.

"Men's skin is essentially the same as women's skin. It has an oilier flow to it help deal with the hair growth, so it's a heavier flow and generally it's a little bit thicker, but apart from that, skin is skin. It's all made up from the three basic skin cells, functioning the same way as a female's skin. And, for me, treating a male is more about being consciously aware that his hair growth stays that way, because it hurts to go against the grain, and just being aware that there is an Adam's apple and not to bang that. But apart from that, there are no significant differences. So I treat them with the same protocols, same products," she said.

"Guys are harder on their skin because, typically, they don't look after their skin like women do. We have lots of male clients and a lot of it is anti-ageing, but of course there is always acne thrown in, and rosacea, and environmental issues."

Wayne woke as Christine applied the hot towels, wiping away excess enzyme treatment.

"So now I'm going to walk out the door looking 35?" asked Wayne, to which Christine replied, "You look very fresh, my friend. Very, very fresh." And he did.

For more information on treatments available at About Me, visit aboutmebeautytherapy.co.nz, phone 839 3539 or email aboutme@xtra.co.nz. About Me is located in the Redicare complex on the corner of Rostrevor and Tristram Streets.