Skin Care for the Troubled.

A little background. A few tips and memories from a skincare lover.

A slightly blurry photo of the author. Their face is in profile and they have no make up on. Photo taken July 2019. Author is 42 years old.

When I first got into skincare it was out of shame. I spent my teen and young adult years full of shame and rage about my face situation. My skin was too oily, too dark for make up I had access to and riddled with hyper-pigmentation. Before we get to the good stuff, let me tell you some mistakes I made trying to be pretty.

1. Burned my face trying to scrub away dark marks with lemons and salt.
2. Tried to fix my texture issues with daily baking soda scrubs. I also tried to fix my teeth this way.
3. Burned my face with undiluted tea tree oil.
4. Spent precious pennies on “expensive” (more than 5$) skin care that gave me rashes and broke me out.
5. Gave up.
6. Tried to bleach my skin two shades so I could wear foundation, gave myself chemical burns.
7. Burnt my skin with proactiv.
8. Generally abused my epidermis.

Most of the advice of the time, remember I am an old and thus had no youtube, you beauty experts, I had Seventeen magazine and Sassy, was to attack oily acne prone skin full force. Most of that advice was bad but, it was what I had. My goals were to simply be less ugly.