You spent your entire young life believing your mother’s skin care “tricks,” her words of wisdom evidently inherited from generations past. What you didn’t realize was that everything your mother told you about skin care, she told while silently nursing deep resentments about the myriad ways you hijacked her youth, sidetracked her professional life, and failed to inherit her angelic femininity. Time to ditch those outdated skin care beliefs, wipe that toothpaste off your pizza-face, admit who your mother is, and face the facts. Your mother told you these skin care myths purely out of spite. Here they are:
1. “Blackheads are caused by your dirty skin and those nasty thoughts of yours.”
You probably spent your whole life thinking that you weren’t washing your face enough and also that those little blackheads were proof you were fundamentally dirty. Hey, this was your mom, why would she lie to you? And yet, even when you scrubbed your pores five times a day with dish soap and stopped using cuss words, those nasty black dots still didn’t disappear. Unfortunately, your mom was wrong and actually just bitter about the long life you still had ahead of you. Blackheads happen when dead skin cells and oils collect in the opening to hair follicles, not when you think about sex!
2. “Your cystic acne builds character, and will eventually cure itself.”
Your mom always promised you that your acne would give you a “unique” perspective on the world. You didn’t need to go to some fancy dermatologist, and being called a red-spotted dragon by Mark K. in choir would make you a more compassionate person and motivate you to sing more clearly. Eventually, you’d see the constellation of swollen pores that decorated your face as badges of honor that made you an honest, virtuous, and humble citizen. But you should know by now that the acne didn’t go away on its own, and instead of building character, it left you with horrible self-esteem. Your mom only told you this because she was unhappy about her failed singing career.
3. “Always pop your pimples, because beauty is pain, of which you have no idea.”
Your mom assured you that popping pimples was a grand family tradition, and the pain was just the most direct route to fixing your broken self. What you didn’t realize was that your mom was simply treating matching your beauty regimen to her labor pains! As she watched you scream in misery as pus erupted from each big, bloated zit, she felt a little less bitter about all that misery you caused when you popped out of her big ol’ belly. Treat your skin with gentle cleansers instead, while seething about who let that woman be alone with a child.
4. “Chocolate ruins your skin’s natural oils, and makes you too excitable.”
Your mom loved warning you that chocolate would sully your fresh-faced complexion and that it made you act “crazy”, because anything that tastes too good is bad. You don’t have to be paid off by the chocolate lobby to know that this is patently false! Your mom was just jealous of your still-intact metabolism. Turns out there’s no link between chocolate and acne, nor is there a link between chocolate and hyperactivity. What a monster!
5. “Slap your face to keep your skin elastic.”
LOL, you thought your mom wanted you to look young forever? She just loved the sound of your palm hitting your cute little baby face. Besides, there’s nothing illegal or frowned-upon about having your kid slap her own face. It saved her the trouble!
Feeling annoyed about those decades you spent foolishly following your mother’s cruel skin care advice like some religious zealot? To help cope, vow to pass this grand tradition of maternal sadism onto your own girlchilden. Maybe that’ll make you feel better about all those years of lies.
