Milk Bath Beauty Is Here To Tone Your Crepey Skin & Plump Fine Lines

As a beauty editor, I like to say my email inbox functions as one giant trend report. While sifting through product launches, upcoming partnerships, and the like, I take note of any patterns or similarities across different categories. Is there a certain ingredient beauty brands are loving right now? Any ebbs and flows I can glean from what's new on the market? 

The reason I offer this peek behind the curtain is that recently, a particular category has taken my inbox by storm. Beauty fans, it seems, want to flood their skin with milk.

Before I go on, let me just say that milky skin is not a "new" trend by any means. Milk has been part of the beauty zeitgeist for ages—I'm talking centuries. Cleopatra herself has been rumored to frequent milk baths for their skin benefits! 

Even today, many folks submerge their angry, inflamed skin in a tub of warm milk (goat, cow, coconut, rice, oat, et al.) to soothe, hydrate, and soften the skin. 

"Milk is very soothing and conditioning for the skin; that's why you'll see a lot of hand soaps, body soaps, and products made with goat's milk because it is super hydrating," board-certified and renowned esthetician Caela Bulzing once told mbg.

Animal-based milk in particular has natural fats that can help build up the skin barrier and seal in moisture. "In addition, [animal-sourced] milk contains enzymes and lactic acid that can help gently exfoliate dead cells," says cosmetic chemist Victoria Fu, co-founder of Chemist Confessions. 

And similar to those DIY milk soaks, "milky" beauty products tend to have a nourishing, calming feel—and some don't even use actual milk at all. Today, milky beauty products may speak more to a product's textural elements than the ingredients inside the goop. 

"Milky products tend to be positioned as gentle, soothing products," says cosmetic chemist and Chemist Confessions co-founder Gloria Lu. "There's also probably some influence from Asian skin care with milky essences and toners." 

So why the obsession with milk? Well, Fu and Lu credit the fixation to social media and the weather. (Sounds like a stretch, but trust, the two are more similar than you think.) 

"In today's social-media-heavy world, milky textures make great visual videos compared to, say, a more traditional thick cream," says Fu. Let's be real: I'd be lying if I said I never purchased a product after seeing its cloudy, supple texture on the 'gram. 

I'd argue why "glazed donut skin" became the leading phenomenon it is today; when TikTok users gloss their skin until viewers can practically feel the dew dripping off the screen, it likely makes you want to invest in whatever they're selling.

Not to mention, we've often used food to describe enticing beauty looks online (Jell-O skin, dewy dumpling skin, etc.), and milky skin is just another iteration of the trend.

As you can probably tell by now, there are multiple varieties of milk used in beauty products. You have animal-based milks—cow, goat, donkey—and you have plant-based options that create a milky-like liquid, like coconut, oat, and rice. One recently launched beauty brand even infuses their products with breast milk (we'll save that story for another day). 

But here's the thing about milk bath beauty: In skin care, "There's no single ingredient that can make a formula milky," says Fu. "It takes proper formulation of water and oil components to get that thin, milky texture."

For example, a product marketed as a "milky toner" might not have actual milk in it at all; it might have oat or rice extracts, but it's the specific oil-water ratio that delivers that milky consistency. 

On that note, just because something is marketed as "milky" doesn't automatically make it calming. "We'd still have to decode each product's ingredient list to figure out their benefits," says Fu.