Buying beauty products for loved ones can be a tough process. Will they like a certain shade of lipstick? What kind of skin do they have—is this moisturizer even compatible? And don't get us started on fragrance. It's all very personal, so unless you know the recipient's beauty tastes extremely well, we recommend playing it safe with a gift that will be loved by one and all.

Enter Harper + Ari Exfoliating Sugar Cubes ($22 for about 20 cubes; dermstore.com). It comes in several delicious scents like Lemon and Blue Raspberry, but Coconut is my personal favorite. Not only will it whisk your gift recipient away to a tropical paradise (a near impossible task for those of us sudsing up in a miniscule New York City bathtub), but the ease of using it makes this scrub—dare we say it—the best gift ever.

To buy: ($22 for about 20 cubes; dermstore.com)

I love that the individual cubes make for a mess-free experience. Simply remove a single square from the jar before getting in the shower and watch it melt away as you scrub.

The ready-to-use cubes make applying body scrub so much easier. Many scrubs come in jars, but I inevitably end up with remnants under my fingernails from digging around for product. Plus, you don't have to worry about excess water seeping into the formula when you can't wrangle the lid closed with water running and a handful of mush in one hand. The result? A luxe shower experience that encourages total relaxation.

Anyone who uses this scrub will immediately notice smoother skin, thanks to gentle exfoliation of dead skin as well as nourishing ingredients like shea butter and aloe.

As an added bonus, the packaging could not be cuter, and these cubes are incredibly easy to travel with. Stash a few in a storage bag and you're good to go with not a spill in sight.

If you’ve heard any of the buzz about thighlighting, you may have assumed it involved shimmery lotion or leg makeup for leaner-looking stems. But this trend takes things up a notch—or 10.

Thighlighting is a new term for a collection of plastic surgery procedures that add up to full-leg makeovers: think thigh lift, calf implants, inner and outer thigh contouring, laser procedures, and liposuction. A-listers with enviable gams like Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, and Jennifer Lopez are said to be driving the trend—as are red-carpet gowns that put the spotlight on this new hot body part. 

The desire for flawless legs is actually part of a larger trend, says Neil Sadick, MD, clinical professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College and past president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. Whereas the focus in plastic surgery was once on the face, he's noticed a new interest in whole-body rejuvenation: "There is now more of an emphasis on improving other places of the body,” he says, including the arms and hands too.

RELATED: If Thigh Gap and Hip Dip Weren't Enough, Now Women Are Supposed to Worry About Having 'Arm Vaginas'

While "thighlighting" may be the latest craze, the treatments involved are not new. “The various procedures that can be used to improve leg appearance have been around for a while,” says New York City board-certified plastic surgeon Constance M. Chen, MD.

If a woman wants to alter how her legs look, however, Dr. Chen recommends surgery only as a last resort. "It is best to start with diet and exercise," she says. Lifestyle changes won't lead to immediate results like surgery, but it's the less invasive route, she notes. After all, going under the knife comes with real risks. Liposuction can damage nerves, muscles, and blood vessels; worsen cellulite; and lead to changes in skin sensations, among other complications. Implants can cause their own problems, since they involve placing a foreign body in your tissues, Dr. Chen notes.

If you are considering any procedures on your legs (surgical or not), it’s important to put your safety first. Dr. Sadick recommends asking your doc how many of these procedures they’ve performed. And remember, there isn't one treatment that does it all, he notes. So if a doctor tells you that—or talks about how easy it'll be to walk away with Bella Hadid’s stems—see someone else.

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And keep in mind, your legs are amazing just the way they are. They carry you through your days—and can take you up mountains, across finish lines, and from one end of town to the other. If you catch yourself obsessing over cellulite or thigh jiggle or any other so-called imperfection, try focusing on all your legs can do, rather than how they look…

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

Conventional wisdom holds that men have the natural advantage when it comes to physical ability. But in one key measure of fitness, women actually come out on top, finds a small new study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.

Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada directed nine women and nine men—all 18-30 year olds who were of similar body mass index—to walk on the treadmill. After a short warm-up, they were asked to walk at gradually increasing speeds and inclines, going until they had reached 80% of their maximum heart rate. Each person wore a face mask to measure how much oxygen they used and how much carbon dioxide they produced.

“The specific measurement we did in this study was to look at how quickly oxygen uptake increases when you go from a rest to exercise transition,” says study author Richard Hughson, kinesiology professor at the University of Waterloo. “If people are unfit, they adapt more slowly to exercise, they perceive it as being a greater load and therefore they back off and they become progressively less fit.”

In that way, Hughson says, oxygen uptake is a great indicator of overall physical fitness—and one in which women excel. The researchers found that women adjusted to exercise after about 30 seconds, while men took 42 seconds. That translates to a roughly 30% faster rate of oxygen processing, and a clear advantage when it comes to physical efficiency. The researchers also found that the female athletes were better at transporting oxygen to tissues throughout their bodies, and that their tissues, in turn, were better at using the extra oxygen.

So while men may be inherently a little stronger and faster than women, they can’t claim to be universally fitter, Hughson says.

“Fitness can be defined by that maximal aerobic power, or it can be defined by some other indicators,” he says. “If you monitor how quickly a person adapts to an exercise level, it really is an indication of fitness and health.”

Next up, says lead author Thomas Beltrame, the research team plans to expand the research to include elite athletes, not just recreational exercisers. “In the future,” Beltrame wrote in an email, “studies are needed to determine if our results from recreationally active men and women, who were matched for fitness, will also apply to the fittest women compared to the fittest men.”