My Weird Winter with Pear Tallow Balm

Okay so. My face was just done. It was like, the middle of February maybe? The air was that kind of dry that makes your knuckles look like a cracked desert and my cheeks felt tight all the time. I was using this fancy cream from that place in the mall, you know the one with the blue jars. Cost like eighty bucks. Felt nice going on. Did nothing. Absolutely nothing. My skin just drank it and asked for more. I was sitting there one night, the heater blasting that weird dusty smell, and I just thought this is stupid. Spending all this money to still feel like a lizard.

Anyway. I was scrolling, you know how you do. Saw something about tallow balm. Beef fat. For your face. I laughed. Out loud. My dog looked at me. It sounded like something my great-grandmother would have had in a tin, next to the lard. But the person talking about it seemed normal. Not like a weirdo. And they said it was whipped, from France, and it smelled like pears. That part got me. Pears. Not "beefy". So I was curious. Skeptical, but curious. My skin couldn't get worse, right? I ordered the Whipped Tallow Balm in Pear from this little Etsy shop. It was like thirty-something dollars. Which, after the eighty-dollar blue jar nonsense, felt almost reasonable.

It arrived in this small, heavy glass jar. No fancy box. Just wrapped in paper. I opened it.

How Beef Fat Ended Up on My Face

Look. The idea is weird. I’m not gonna lie. Smearing rendered cow fat on your cheeks feels primal. But the logic, when I finally read it, made a dumb kind of sense. They say tallow from grass-fed cows is close to the oils our own skin makes. Our sebum. So instead of putting some lab-made silicone slick on top that just sits there, this stuff supposedly sinks in and tells your skin it can chill out. Stop over-producing oil because, hey, we got this. Good for winter wreckage, rough hands, all that. I have a spot on my elbow that gets psoriasis-ish in the cold. I figured if it could handle that, my face stood a chance.

The texture threw me. I was expecting… grease. Like bacon grease in a jar. It wasn’t that. It was thick but soft. You dip a finger in and it’s cool and solid, but it melts the second you touch it. Like the warmth of your finger just turns it into this… I don’t know. Silky oil? Not oily. Ugh, I’m bad at this. It was weird. In a good way. It felt substantial. Like food for your skin, not just a coating.

The smell. Okay, the pear thing. It’s not like a Jolly Rancher. Not super sweet. It’s light. Fresh. Like you cut into a just-ripe pear and that first scent hits you, but quieter. Gentle. It doesn’t smell like a dessert or a candle. It just smells clean and a tiny bit fruity. And it fades pretty fast, which I like. I don’t want to smell my face all day.

So I started. I washed my face with my regular cheap drugstore cleanser. Dried it. Took a tiny scoop, warmed it between my fingers, and just… patted it on. My whole face. And my sad elbows. And my knuckles.

What Actually Happened to My Skin

The first thing was the immediate feeling. That tight, thirsty feeling was gone. Like instantly. My skin felt… calm. Not shiny, not greasy. Just quiet. I went to bed thinking well, at least it feels nice tonight.

I didn’t expect a miracle. I really didn’t.

But after a few days of this tallow balm daily use, I noticed something. My foundation, which usually caked up in the dry patches on my nose by noon, was just… sitting there. Normally. No flakes. That was new. After a week, the redness around my nostrils, from constant wiping and dryness, had backed off. My elbows, which I’d basically given up on, were softer. Not perfect. But they didn’t catch on my sweater sleeves anymore.

The real test was a super windy, cold day. I had to be outside. I slathered this stuff on like armor. Usually, after a day like that, my skin would be angry. Red, tight, stingy. I’d come home and have to do a whole recovery routine. That night? My face was fine. Just fine. A little wind-blown, but not punished. It was the first time I thought, oh, this isn’t just a nice feeling cream. This is actually doing something.

It became my one thing. My whole natural skincare routine got stupid simple. Wash. Tallow balm. Done. Morning and night. Sometimes just at night if I was lazy. I stopped layering serums and toners and all that noise. My bathroom counter got less cluttered. My wallet was happier.

Would I Buy This Jar of Weirdness Again?

Yeah. I’m on my second one now.

I didn’t have a dramatic transformation. I didn’t turn into a dewy goddess. My pores didn’t vanish. I still get a zit if I eat too much sugar. That’s life. But my skin is just… reliably okay now. It’s not a problem I have to manage constantly. It’s hydrated. It’s balanced. It doesn’t freak out when the weather changes. For me, switching to natural products wasn’t about some purist ideal. It was about finding something that worked without a list of forty unpronounceable ingredients. This works. It’s one ingredient, basically, plus some pear scent.

I got one for my mom too. She has winter hands that crack and bleed. She called me last week and said, “What is in that little cream? My hands haven’t looked like this in years.” She’s a tougher critic than I am.

So yeah. If your skin is feeling difficult, or you’re tired of complicated routines that don’t deliver, this might be worth a shot. It’s definitely weird. But it’s a good weird. I got mine from “PureMountainTallow” on Etsy, if you’re looking. They just make the stuff, no big fancy website. I like that.

Anyway. My skin’s happy. I’m happy. That’s the whole point, right?

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Quick Questions I Get Asked

Is beef tallow good for your face? Sounds crazy, but yeah. The idea is that the fat structure is really similar to what our skin already produces. So it absorbs deep instead of sitting on top. It’s like giving your skin something it actually recognizes and knows how to use.

Does tallow balm clog pores? I was worried about this. My skin can get clogged easy. But no, for me it didn’t. Because it absorbs so well, it doesn’t just block everything up. It’s not like putting Vaseline on. It feels more like it gets in there and does its job. My pores actually seem less… noticeable? Maybe because they’re not so dry and stretched out.

What does the Pear tallow balm smell like? It’s light. Really light. Like the smell when you first walk past the pears at the grocery store. Not candy-sweet, not perfumey. Just a fresh, clean, faintly fruity smell. It goes away after a minute or two. I barely notice it now.