Adult Acne Should Be Illegal

Do y’all do Influenster? You basically fill out some quizzes and answer some questions, and you get matched with free products to review. I’ve gotten a lot of cosmetic items as well as several general “mommy” type boxes that include things as varied as hair ties, pens and coupons for free sour cream. The trick to getting matched is ticking any box that might fit you, so if you have thin, oily and color-treated hair, tell them all that in the event that the one product they’re targeting fits one of those demographics. Make sense? Well, I think I need to tone down that approach with anything that’s potentially a skincare item.

When I was in high school, I had an AP English class where the teacher had everyone write positive things about their classmates. I’m pretty sure I still have these papers in a file somewhere. I, uh, didn’t fit in during high school. I was “smart” and got good grades, but my family were outcasts in the dominant religious culture, and I happened to grow up in a town with a lot of bitterness about the religious history that made that happen, but I digress. I had a small handful of friends that I ate lunch with, none of whom ever came home to my house or hung out with me after school. (I stopped inviting school friends over in middle school after we had CPS called on us for having too much unfolded laundry in our house. My mom was in college trying to earn her teaching degree so that we could escape poverty and was terrified for months that her efforts would cause her to lose all her kids. True story. Seriously, people, offer to help.) So, having people say nice things about me, even if they technically *had* to for a grade was fun. From what I remember, a good half of these kind words were about how I had great skin.

Had being the operative word. Heh. Because, as soon as I started having kids, adult acne introduced herself, plopped down on the bench and made herself SUPER comfy. She’s pretty much been there ever since. Which sucks. Because, once you hit your 20s, you think you’ve dodged that, right? That’s a teenager thing. Wouldn’t that be nice? (I legitimately once had a BIL ask me if I had chicken pox when I wasn’t wearing makeup. Nice. Nope. Just freaking, stupid, *$&%^ acne!! It’s worse when I was pregnant, so I felt fat and sloppy and like I was walking around with chicken pox face. Good times.) At 41, my skin is stupidly picky about what it likes, and changing that up can cause outbreaks of cystic acne. Yay. However, being that I am, uh, 41, it would also be nice to, you know, work on firming and combat wrinkles.

Thanks to Influenster, I know that is a hard no. Every single time I get something that is targeted to aging, I regret it. Number one, they all smell like a grandma, and not a hip one, I might add. And, they cause break outs every. single. time. Grrr. A few weeks ago I received a Perricone firming face serum. I’m sure this thing is ridiculously expensive and it probably even works amazing, but it’s a hard no for me. My skin has been clearer in the past few months than it has in years. (Like, I’ve only had about one blemish at any given time, and they were healing at a decent rate.) I tried this thing ONE TIME, and, I kid you not, I had FOUR new blemishes within 24 hours of applying it. No. Just no.

So, it looks like I need to stop applying for skincare products, or at least only tick the boxes about having acne prone skin. In case anyone is curious, my go-to skin products are either Origins Foaming Face Wash or Harry’s exfoliating Peppermint Face Cream as well as the Origins Gin-zing Moisturizer. All my peeps with acne go shop for those amazing products (if they were on Amazon, I’d link you up, but, alas, bad skin has expensive taste. Try Sephora. You can get Harry’s at Walmart.) while I alternate between rocking in the corner and reading all the notes from my high school classmates about “what nice skin I had.” I guess the good news is that I naturally have okay aging genes, so I don’t have out of control wrinkling or sagging for my age. I’ll take the consolation however it comes.