Hey, Pizza Face!

For a while I went through a period where it seemed the older I got, the younger I looked, but then somewhere around 31 or 32, I started showing my age. Wrinkles. Sagging eyelids. Funky skin tone. The inevitable descent of my jowls (thanks to my mom’s side). Pores so big you could drive a truck through them, that sort of thing. All the usual signs of aging, compounded by years of horrific eating habits, harsh climates, excess makeup, and cigarette smoke (my own and that of just about everyone I’ve ever lived with). Although I still live in a harsh climate, something that isn’t going to change for a while, I’ve gotten rid of the smoke (I’ll be quit for 6 months next week, yay me), I don’t wear foundation anymore, and I’ve started eating better - I just started Weight Watchers, and I drink enough water on a daily basis to float a small armada.

So then, would someone PLEASE explain why my face looks like it belongs inside a Papa John’s box? Look, when I said I wanted to look younger, I did NOT mean I wanted to look like a greasy, hormone-laden 16-year-old. That actually might not be SO bad, but I look like a greasy, hormone-laden 16-year-old with WRINKLES. I thought that when you started getting wrinkles, you stopped getting zits. I now have more of both than I’ve ever had in my whole life!

This is beyond the “oh, no, I have a pimple!” mini-crises of my yesteryears. This is serious acne. On my forehead is an archipelago of zits, all different shapes and sizes in all different stages of development. There’s a small cluster camping out on my right cheek. There’s a colony forming on the side of my nose. For every one that clears up, two more rise to the surface. Most of them are relatively normal-sized, as pimples go, but now and then I get a monster. I recently had one directly between my eyes that was so big I could see out of it. Right now I’m sporting a volcanic growth on the side of my chin that has its own zip code. Or would that be a ZIT code? *ba-dum-CRASH!*

Anyway, I really never had this problem when I was younger. I would get a pimple, maybe two, usually at the most inopportune times, leading to drastic measures to execute their removal on occasion - like the time I burned a dime-sized hole in the middle of my forehead with Compound-W two nights before the prom. (Hey, come on, it was worth a try…I figured if it could remove a wart in three days, then surely it would remove a zit overnight)! But most times I’d get a pimple, I’d lament my cruel fate, dab on the Clearasil, and away I’d go.

So what is an aging thirty-something to do these days? I’m in constant battle, armed with little experience in the world of blemish-fighting. I go to the store and am overwhelmed by the number of cleansers, toners, scrubs, masks, moisturizers, astringents, anti-wrinkle this, oxygen-boosting that, pro-vitamins, alpha-hydroxy, beta-byproxy, free-radical-blockers, and so on and so on. My shower is now littered with half-empty (yes, I’m a pessimist) tubes of various cleansers and scrubs, the back of the toilet cluttered with lotions and potions, all claiming various miracles. I even ordered that stuff off the infomercial on television, you know, the stuff hawked over the years by such peaches-and-creamy-complected celebs as Vanessa L. Williams, Judith Light, Valerie Bertinelli, Britney Spears, and Jessica Simpson. I thought, “hey, this stuff works for everyone – young, old, white, black, models, actresses, rock-star wives, pop-stars, has-beens, wanna-bes, tabloid mega-fodder…surely it will work for ME!” Well, it didn’t. In fact it made the situation worse. Turns out I’ve got some sensitivity to the active ingredient and after two days I looked like someone had set my face on fire and put it out with a rake. Not exactly what I was going for there. So much for that idea.

So for now I just walk around with my hand in front of my face a lot, avoid talking to nice-looking guys, and complain to my girlfriends while pointing at the offending face invaders. I’ll blame it on stress and hormones, two things I can do little about at the moment. Then maybe once I get through this phase I’ll begin my war on the wrinkles.