Boston - May 01, 2006

Know It All

Visia Face Mapping at Essentially Bare

Ignorance, they’ve been known to say, is bliss.

Clearly, whoever came up with that one wasn’t dropping hundreds every month on skin care.

How can you figure out which treatments and products are working and which aren’t? Start with the new Visia skin analysis at Essentially Bare Cosmetic and Laser Clinic, which tests your skin down to the pore.

The machine takes pictures of your face, calculates some personal information, and gives you a map of how your epidermis stacks up against those of others your age — measuring evenness (hmm), bacteria (yikes), photodamage (eek), wrinkles (oh, no), and spots (horrors).

From the results, you decide whether your current regimen is working (or whether you’re wasting your dinero). In the case of the latter, the folks at E.B. will help devise a new program to get your skin in the condition you’d like.

And that, frankly, is far closer to our idea of bliss.

Available at Essentially Bare Cosmetic and Laser Clinic, 777 Concord Avenue, Cambridge (617-876-5258).