My Daughter Asked Why I'm Never In Any Of The Pictures
I didn't have an answer for her. Eight jars of firming cream, a $2,700 quote and a physio appointment for my knee later, I finally found out why none of it had worked. I'm forty-nine. It wasn't what I'd spent eleven years assuming.
I've been the one holding the camera since about 2015.
Not on purpose. Not at first.
But if you're the one taking the photo, you're not in the photo. And after a few years everybody just accepts that's your job.
Two Christmases ago my daughter was scrolling back through the album on my phone, looking for something else entirely.
She's fourteen. She wasn't making a point.
She just said, “Mum, why are you never in any of these?”
I told her I was the family photographer.
“No, but really.”
I didn't have an answer for her. Or I had one, and I wasn't going to hand it to a fourteen-year-old girl who has only just started checking herself sideways in shop windows.
I Had Organised Eleven Years Around About One Square Foot Of Skin
I want to be accurate about the scale of this, because I think a lot of women will recognise it and be slightly horrified.
I hadn't worn shorts since 2014.
I knew which chair at my sister's place. I knew which change rooms had the overhead light and which had it from the side, and I knew that the three-way mirror at the shopping centre near work was the worst one in the state.
That Christmas it was thirty-four degrees and I was in linen trousers.
There is a pair of navy shorts in my wardrobe with the tags still on. I bought them the way you buy something for a version of yourself who's arriving later.
Nobody knew about any of this. That's the part I'd underestimated. It wasn't a conversation I was having with anybody. It was just a small, constant, private administration running underneath every ordinary day.
By Then I'd Bought Eight Of Them
Firming creams. Over about eleven years. I can list them.
One from the chemist. Then a much more expensive one, because I assumed the cheap one was the problem. That's how they get you the second time. One with caffeine in it. A retinol body treatment. A “sculpting” gel a woman I used to work with was selling. One from an Instagram ad that arrived in a nicer box than it deserved. One I genuinely cannot remember the name of.
And the eighth is under my bathroom sink right now with about two-thirds left in it.
About five hundred dollars, all up. Plus six weeks of dry brushing, coffee scrubs until I got sick of the shower drain, a massage gun that lives in a cupboard, and eighteen months of Pilates twice a week which I loved and which did absolutely nothing for this.
I know exactly what happened with the jar under the sink, because it's what happened with all eight. Every night for a week. Then most nights. Then I stopped checking, and then I stopped using it, and I never once made a decision to stop. It just moved to the back.
Then in February my husband asked whether I'd knocked my leg on something.
He meant it kindly. He thought they were bruises.
So I Went And Priced The Real Thing
That was the week I stopped messing about and looked at what actually works.
I sat in a consultation and was quoted $2,700 for a course of six sessions.
Six sessions. For the backs of my legs.
I said I'd think about it, which we both understood to mean no.
Then I went home and did the thing I should have done first, which was read what women who'd actually paid say afterwards. Plenty describe a real result that faded over the following year. Plenty describe spending several thousand dollars and being quietly unsure whether anything changed at all.
I also read about Qwo. It's a cellulite injection that was approved in the States in 2020, and the company pulled it off the market in December 2022 after most of the women in its trials ended up with bruising and discolouration at the injection sites.
That was where I landed on it. Some women get to their late forties and this is simply what happens, and the sensible thing is to stop spending money and buy longer shorts.
I left it alone for about six months.
Then A Physio Treating My Knee Told Me Why None Of It Had Worked
I want to be clear that I wasn't there about this. I was there about a knee.
Cam Reidy had me on the table in shorts, because that's what you're in at physio, and I made some remark to get in front of it. You know the one. The joke you make first so nobody else has to.
He didn't laugh. He also didn't tell me I looked fine, which I appreciated more than I expected to.
“Do you actually know what that is? Structurally?”
I said I'd always assumed it was fat.
“It isn't. And that's the whole reason nothing you've tried has worked.”
It Isn't Fat. It's Architecture.
He explained it in about ninety seconds and I've thought about it nearly every day since.
Between your skin and the muscle underneath there are bands of fibrous tissue. They're called septae. They run downward, anchoring the underside of your skin to the tissue below, like guy ropes on a tent.
In between those bands sits fat, in small compartments, close to the surface.
The bands pull down. The fat pushes up.
That's it. That's the whole thing. The dimples are where the bands are anchored. The raised parts are where the fat has nowhere else to go.
I said, “Like a buttoned mattress.”
“Exactly like a buttoned mattress.”
And that's the image that finally made eleven years make sense. Because you can steam a mattress cover. You can iron it. You can replace it with better fabric, you can do anything you like to the outside of it.
The buttons are stitched through to the frame. The buttons don't move.
He said this is also why very lean women have it, and why athletes have it, and why it didn't go anywhere when I lost eight kilos in 2019.
It was never going to go away at a lower weight. Not at any weight. That was not a discipline problem and it was never a failure of yours.
“So Which Cream Fixes It?”
“None of them.”
I asked whether he meant the cheap ones.
“I mean all of them. Nothing you spread on with your hand travels down through the full thickness of your skin and mechanically releases a band of fibrous tissue. It isn't a formula problem. There is no formula that does that.”
I looked it up afterwards, because I wanted him to be wrong. He isn't. The published work says topical products produce, at most, a slight and temporary firming of the skin's surface, and that they cannot reach the septae.
So. Eight jars. About five hundred dollars. Eleven years of privately concluding I was the sort of woman who keeps falling for it.
And I had never once bought a product that was physically capable of doing the thing I bought it for.
I started putting my shoe back on. Not upset, exactly. Just finished with it. At least now I could stop.
“That's Not What I Said.”
He said there were two separate things happening in what I'd been looking at in the mirror, and I'd spent eleven years treating them as one.
The bands
Those weren't moving. Nothing I could buy was going to move them.
The skin itself
The surface. How much water it holds. Its texture, its tone, how firm it is at the surface, and how it takes light, whether it scatters it or reflects it.
And that, he said, is a genuinely large share of what you actually see. In a mirror, in ordinary light, in a pair of shorts.
“You've spent eleven years judging surface products by whether they moved a structural problem. They were never going to. That doesn't mean the surface can't change.”
I asked why nobody sells that.
“Because nobody would pay for it. So they sold you the deep one instead, and they've always known they couldn't reach it.”
The deep layer is closed. It has been the whole time.
The surface layer was never closed. It's just that in eleven years and eight jars, not one product had been honestly aimed at it.
Then he said the thing that actually changed what I did that week.
“Do you want to know what we use on the surface layer in here? On athletes. Every day. It's been around about a hundred years and it costs nothing.”
“It's The Oldest Thing In This Building”
Contrast therapy. Hot and cold, back and forth.
It's the hot tub and the cold plunge. It's in every physio department and every recovery room in professional sport, and Kneipp was doing it with river water in the 1800s.
Cold pulls blood away from the surface. Warmth brings it back toward it. The swing between them is the whole point.
I said I'd done sauna-then-cold-pool at a hotel once and it had felt tremendous, so I already believed in it the way you believe in something you've never actually thought about.
“Right. Nobody's ever needed convincing of that one. It's just that nobody's ever pointed it at skin.”
I asked whether it gets rid of dimples.
“No. I already told you. Nothing does.”
But You're Not Doing That To Your Own Thigh At Nine O'Clock At Night
That was my next question and he laughed at it, because the honest answer is that you can't.
You're not running a hot bath and an ice bath every evening. A hot flannel loses its heat in about forty seconds and does nothing you'd notice. And the thing he kept coming back to was that the contact matters as much as the temperature. A few minutes of real pressure and movement on the tissue, not something you smear on and walk away from.
So that's where I left it. Interesting, unusable, and at least I finally understood why I'd wasted eleven years.
A fortnight later I found the gel.
It's Called Cryo Thermo Firming Gold Gel, And I've Been Using It Since September
Cryo Thermo Firming Gold Gel · 200g
It's a rinse-off massage gel that runs both phases in sequence while your hands do the work.
It goes on cold. Then the warmth builds up through it. Then you leave it a while and rinse it off.
There's gold in it, which makes it look expensive in the jar. I'll be straight with you. I don't think the gold is doing much, and I'd be suspicious of anybody who told you it was the reason it works. It makes the whole thing feel like an object rather than a chore, and after eight jars of beige cream I've decided that's worth something on its own.
What it is not: it isn't a treatment, it isn't a device, and it is not going to release those bands. Nothing is.
Why I Trusted This One More Than The Last Eight
I couldn't find out much about them, so I did the only thing I could, which was check what was checkable.
What convinced me was reading the category properly for the first time, which I'd never bothered to do in eleven years of buying from it.
Every single one of those, except the last two, is a surface product wearing a structural promise.
Cryo Thermo Gold Gel is the only thing I looked at that says out loud which layer it's for. That's the entire reason I bought it. Not a badge, not a percentage, and not a doctor I can't verify.
Two other things, while I'm being thorough. The full ingredient list is published on the product page. Everything in it, in order, with a plain-English line on what each part is actually for, including the ones that are only there to make it feel and look nice. In eleven years of buying these, not one had done that.
And they have a small number of reviews, because they're new. I'd rather that than the four thousand reviews I stopped believing years ago.
The Protocol, Properly. Because Nobody Ever Gave Me One.
This is the part every other jar left out, and I now think that omission is why half of them failed on their own terms.
One jar lasts me about five weeks doing both thighs. Longer if you're working on one smaller area.
What Happens In The First Ninety Seconds Is The Whole Reason I'm Still Doing This
This gets its own section, because it's what separated it from everything else, and it happened on night one.
The cold arrives the moment it touches you. Not a menthol sting, just genuinely cold, the way a cold flannel is cold. Then somewhere underneath it the warmth starts coming up and spreading, and for a minute or so you have both at once, which is a strange and quite good feeling that I have never got from anything else I've put on my legs.
Here's why that mattered far more than I expected.
Every jar I ever bought felt like nothing. That is the actual problem with them. Not that they don't work. It's that you can't tell. You rub it in, it vanishes, and then you're standing in a bathroom taking it entirely on faith for six weeks, examining a part of your body you already dislike, looking for a change that was never coming.
That's why they end up at the back of the cupboard. It isn't laziness. There's simply nothing to hold on to.
And I want to be careful here, because this is exactly the sort of sentence I'd have been suspicious of. The sensation is not proof that it's working. It's a warming agent in a gel that's mostly water, which is why it goes on cold and then heats up. You can feel both. That's all that means.
But it is proof that something is happening on the first night, which is more than any of the other eight ever gave me. And it's the only reason I got as far as night thirty, which is where the real question gets answered.
What Actually Happened
Outer thigh. Same window, same time of evening, same distance, unretouched.
Nothing visible. Obviously. But I did it seven nights out of seven, which had never happened with anything I'd bought before.
I was putting moisturiser on after a shower and my hand went over the outside of my thigh and it felt different before it looked different. Smoother under the hand. Less of the slightly loose, papery thing it had been doing.
I'll be honest that I stood there a while deciding whether I'd invented it.
The change room. The bad one, with the overhead light, which I'd been avoiding since about 2016.
Better. Not gone. Better.
The texture across the outside and the back looked more even. It looked like skin in decent condition rather than skin that had given up. In that particular light it still wasn't what I'd have chosen. In every other light I stood in that week, it was fine.
My sister asked if I'd been swimming. “Your legs look well.”
Not a compliment about my body. A small, slightly puzzled observation from somebody with no idea I was doing anything at all.
I wore shorts to a barbecue.
Nothing happened. Nobody said anything, nobody looked, and about forty minutes in I realised I hadn't thought about my legs once since I got in the car.
That was the thing I'd been trying to buy for eleven years. It turned out not to be smooth legs. It was a barbecue where I didn't think about it.
And I want to point at those dates deliberately. Every one of them is inside the first eight weeks. That matters, and I'll come back to it when I get to the money.
And Here's What Didn't Happen
The dimples are still there.
Standing up, overhead light, back of the thigh. I can still see them. Nothing about that has changed, and based on everything I'd been told, nothing was ever going to.
What changed is everything around them. The texture. The firmness at the surface. How even it looks. The general impression, at ordinary angles in ordinary light, of skin that's in reasonable condition for a woman of forty-nine.
That is a smaller thing than any of the eight jars promised me.
It's also the only one of the nine that actually happened.
Dimpling unchanged. Texture and firmness improved.
Eight weeks. Age 51, outer thigh.
The Photograph
This Christmas just gone we were at my sister's and somebody was getting a photo of the four of us, and I did the thing I've done automatically for about a decade, which is reach for the camera.
My daughter said, “No.”
So I'm in it.
I've looked at it a few times since. I'm not going to tell you I love how I look in it. That isn't what happened, and I don't think it's what most women are actually after anyway.
I'm in it.
That's the whole thing.
Women Who've Used It
Tbh i have a literal drawer of failed creams so i was pretty skeptical about buying another one. I really liked that the website was honest about what it does and doesn't do bc most brands just lie to u. Its not magic but my legs feel way smoother and less papery than they did a few months ago. I’m actually finishing the jar for once which is a first lol.
I spent almost 3k on a clinic course for my legs and the results just faded after a while so it felt like a waste of money. I needed something for the skin texture that wouldnt cost a fortune every time i wanted a treatment. This gel is way better for my budget and i actually like the massage part. Skin looks way more hydrated and even now honestly.
Just being honest bc I dont want to mislead anyone. The dimples are still there but the skin around them looks so much better now. It was looking really tired and crepey before but now it just looks healthy and firm. If u want to get rid of the deep structural stuff this wont do that but for the surface it is really great.
I almost threw this in the bin after week two bc i didnt see a diff yet and i was ready to give up again. So glad i stuck with it tho!! I started noticing it feeling smoother under my hand around week 4 and now it really looks better in the mirror. Just have to be consistent w/ the massage every night.
The Questions I'd Have Asked
How soon will I notice anything?
The cold then warm, the first time you use it. Anything visible, realistically somewhere between weeks three and five, and it will turn up under your hand before it turns up in the mirror. If you're expecting week one you'll stop in week two, like I always used to.
My legs are worse than the ones in these photos.
Mine were worse than photos I'd seen too, and I don't think that question is really about severity. What it's actually asking is whether the mechanism still applies. It does. The anatomy is the same anatomy whether you've got a little of it or a lot. What changes with severity is how much of the total effect sits in the structural layer versus the surface, and I won't pretend otherwise. If yours is mostly deep and structural, the surface improvement is a smaller share of what you're looking at.
I'm fifty-eight. Is it too late?
This is the question I'd have asked loudest. The surface layer isn't age-gated the way the structural layer is. Hydration, texture, tone and surface firmness respond at any age, which is the entire reason skincare exists for women in their seventies. It is not a smaller prize at fifty-eight than at forty-nine. It's the same prize.
Will it come back if I stop?
Yes. I'd rather say that plainly than have you find out. This is surface condition, and surface condition reverts, the same way it does if you stop moisturising your face. It's five minutes a night, ongoing. It isn't a course you finish.
Does it sting? I've got sensitive skin.
It's warmth rather than a burn. There's no capsicum in it, no menthol and no alcohol. The heat comes from vanillyl butyl ether, which is what's used in sports and massage products, and it sits alongside aloe, allantoin, witch hazel and licorice root. It is fragranced, so factor that in if fragrance is your trigger. Patch test a small area first and give it a day.
Is it greasy? Does it smell? Do I have to shower after?
It's a rinse-off gel, so rinsing is part of it, not a chore added on the end. You're doing this after a shower and rinsing at the basin, or hopping back in for thirty seconds. Nothing is left sitting on your skin, and nothing transfers to your sheets.
Will it stain my sheets or the shower?
No. They've tested it on fabric and it rinses clean. Do the rinse before you get into bed or into anything you care about and this stops being a question.
Where can I use it?
Thighs, buttocks, hips, stomach and upper arms. Not on your face, and not on broken or irritated skin.
Am I signing up to a subscription?
No. One jar, one payment, no auto-billing, and nothing rebills unless you order again.
What arrives, and what does the box say?
A plain, padded parcel with nothing on the outside to say what's inside it. No product name, no description.
Pregnant or breastfeeding?
Ask your doctor before starting anything new.
Stretch marks?
They don't totally disappear. Nothing topical does that either. What changes is the skin around them: better hydrated, more even, less crepey, which makes them a lot less less obvious than they were. That's an appearance change, not a repair.
What It Costs, And Why I'm Telling You What I Paid For The Other Thing
I know women who paid that and more, got a real result, and watched it fade. And the one product that was genuinely approved to act on the bands themselves was pulled off the market in 2022.
Cryo Thermo Gold Gel is $58 a jar, and less than that per jar if you take more than one.
I'm not going to pretend that makes it cheap, or that cheap is the argument. Eight jars is about five hundred dollars of evidence that cheap isn't the argument.
The argument is that it's the first one that told me the truth about what it couldn't do.
About The Guarantee, Which I'd Normally Skip Past
I'd have scrolled past this too, so let me say why it's here.
The reason I'd stopped buying these wasn't really the money, although eight jars adds up to a small fortune and I have added it up. It's that every one of them cost me the money and a bit more of my belief that anything could change. That second cost is the expensive one, and nobody refunds it.
If nothing changed, email them and get your money back. You don't return anything and you don't explain yourself.
And here's why sixty days is the right number rather than a nice round one. Go back through what I described.
Every single thing that happened to me happened inside that window. You are not being asked to decide before the evidence arrives.
What I would tell you is not to decide in week two. Week two is precisely when I always quit, and week two is before anything on that list had happened.
The Bit I Didn't Expect
It's five minutes with my hands, and then twenty minutes in which nobody needs anything from me, because I'm standing in a bathroom waiting for a gel to come off.
I thought the five minutes was the chore part. It turns out the twenty minutes is most of why I'm still doing it.
I won't make it sound like more than it is. It's a jar of gel and half an hour of an ordinary evening. But if you're the one who organises everybody else's life, and you already know exactly which chair and which mirror and which lighting, then you probably know how few of those minutes there actually are.
