PartyLite Elderflower Springs Sugar Body Scrub

For black women, one of the scariest beauty situations one can get in is when one runs out of lotion. When you’re ashy, you are ASHY, and no amount of moisturizing body wash can make this less of a fact. Alternatives do exist, however.

In-shower body oils are great for summer moisturizing, but I’ve found that the grease factor can sometimes be a little uncomfortable under corduroys. The oil is absorbed by your skin eventually, but I’m always afraid of ruining clothes in the meantime. So when my beloved moisturizer ran out and I completely forgot to pick up another bottle on the way home, I scrambled to find an alternative that wouldn’t leave me looking like Ashy Larry by 3pm.

The Elderflower Springs-scented sugar body scrub from PartyLite’s Well-Being Spa collection not only exfoliates like a champ and smells delicious, but it’s infused with shea butter, mango, jojoba, and apricot oils, leaving my skin slick, but not sticky and gross, after I washed it off. I didn’t need to follow up with a moisturizer after drying off, and my skin smelled so good I didn’t bother adding perfume, either.

I decided to stick with the sugar scrub until I finally bothered to drag my absentminded self to the store for lotion, which was really a bi-product of running out of toilet paper, an item of which there really is no qualified substitute.

$24.95, partylite.com