Talking Dirty: Deep Clean with Clays and Muds

Aug 9, 2007

Except for that time that you traipsed it across your momma's clean floors, a little mud never hurt anyone. Especially when it's slathered, lathered and splattered across your body. Clay and mud treatments are a staple of the spas and you'd be surprised to know just how much dirt (the good kind) gets mixed up in your favorite beauty products. Rich in minerals and natural botanicals, cosmetic-grade clays draw impurities from the skin while flushing it with nutrients and stimulating circulation. At every price point, you'll find a therapeutic mud and clay mask to fit your skin type. Here's the dirt!

• Sea Spa Black Mud Body Wrap is composed mainly of black mud from the Dead Sea, which rejuvenates skin with a burst of minerals and plant extracts, $30. Find black mud soaps, shampoos and body treatments at the new Sea Spa Skincare boutique and spa in Scottsdale Fashion Square.
• Olay Daily Facials Intensives Clay Mask is a new product that sops up excess oil with kaolin and marine extracts, $6 at most drugstores.
• Lather White Clay Deep Pore Cleansing Mask contains pure white kaolin clay from China, bentonite and a slew of botanicals to gently leach impurities from the skin, $22. Also good for use on excessively oily areas during monthly hormonal breakouts.
• Lush Herbalism is green, mean and calls on natural clay to absorb oils. Read more about our Lush mask obsession.
• DDF Sulfur Therapeutic Mask contains a super trio of bentonite, kaolin and sulfur to absorb oil and unclog pores, $34. Great as an overnight acne spot treatment.
• Thalgo Deep-Cleansing Absorbent Mask is a naturally healing and purifying mask that calls on marine mud to regulate oil production, $32.
• Joey New York Pure Pores Masque helps clear blemishes with camphor, sulfur and bentonite, $28.
• Epoch Glacial Marine Mud from NuSkin is an absorbent, skin-purifying mask made from mud and marine botanicals from the Pacific Northwest, $24.70.

For a DIY clay concoction, try the Spa Boy's favorite Game Face Mask with French green clay.

Photo: Black Mud Body Wrap from Sea Spa Skincare in Scottsdale, $30.