The Dark-Circles Fix

Megan O’Neill is new to goop—and the initiation process involves a pretty fantastic learning curve. Here, her adventures in onboarding, goop-style:

I didn’t know I had dark under-eye circles until a cute but unnervingly advanced toddler tells me so: She’s my friend’s three-year-old; sitting on my lap in a busy restaurant one Sunday, she points up at my face. “Why so dark there?” Yup, my eyes are dark brown, I say, beaming down at her. “No.” she says, growing insistent.

She touches her miniature finger just under my eye. “It darker there.”

I abruptly hand her over to her mom, excuse myself to the restroom, and make a beeline for the mirror. There are definitely bulgy little half-moon shadows under my eyes…which I’ve noticed before, but thought that at the very worst they made me look a bit gritty, sort of like a late-’90s Fiona Apple in her Criminal video. But this look, truth be told, is more exhausted than edgy.

Puffy dark circles are caused by lots of things, among them aging (the thin skin under the eyes becomes even thinner), lack of sleep, imbalanced diet, and dark skin tones (dark-complexioned people often have darker circles because we have more melanin).

Dark circles aren’t the end of the world, obviously, but that night, surveying the potions in my bathroom, the Perfecting Eye Cream from goop by Juice Beauty jumps out at me (perhaps unsurprisingly). On multiple occasions, I’ve overheard coworkers gushing about how “actually insane it is.” So I dip in and gently smooth the cream around my eyes. It feels incredible—the high-tech blend of peptides, cooling aloe, and almond oil feels beautifully soothing against my skin. If this stuff came in a giant tub, I’d slather it over my entire body.

• goop by Juice Beauty Perfecting Eye Cream goop, $80

No more Fiona Apple for me: I use it every morning and night in the coming weeks—and at the same time, work to get more actual sleep and scale back on not-so-healthy foods. And I make myself an appointment for the Integrated Eye-Lift at Brooklyn Herborium, an impossibly lovely, holistic spa-grocery that stocks everything from local honey to the crispiest organic apples.

I look forward to the calming ritual of tamping on my goop eye cream. I’m thrilled it’s free of the parabens, phthalates, “fragrance” (which can be a stand-in for a laundry list of potentially carcinogenic substances), and other questionable ingredients that lace conventional eye creams: This one is pure botanical-oil-and-extract magic.

After just a week, I’m encouraged by how energetic and fresh I look (you’re not supposed to see a difference that quickly, but I think some combination of the cream and facial did the trick). Because the cream’s so intensely hydrating, plus it employs rejuvenating peptides to wake up your skin, it leaves the best little flourish of gleaminess, making it an excellent (four-second) day-to-night fixer-upper. I see my friend the toddler—this time, she says my socks are funny. Must mean we’re good on the dark circles.

These are the musings and opinions of Megan O’Neill based on her own personal experience. Individual responses can vary greatly.