When I was a kid my freckles were cute. Teen magazine assured my teen self of this, too, in those good-body-image articles. Now that I’m in my thirties, my freckles are suddenly not charming kisses from the sun but (insert crack of thunder here) SUN DAMAGE.
At the hair salon on Saturday, my stylist asked if I’d ever viewed my skin under an ultraviolet light to see the sun damage that had yet to reveal itself. “When I did it I was upset for three days afterward,” my stylist said. Pshaw, I thought. Such a superficial thing would never bother me. Anyway, I have a face full of adorable sun kisses, so I can’t imagine negative results.
So my stylist shined this ultraviolet light into my face, holding a mirror so I could see. AWWWWWWWK! Never mind the freaky fluorescent green of my pupils. My forehead alone was one big freckle, my cheeks the Milky Way.
“I must be pretty average, though, right, in terms of sun damage?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from wavering. “Doesn’t everyone look like this under one of these (&@#$*!!&) lights?”
“No, you’re right up there at the top,” she said.
The top? But I wasn’t even one of those sun-worshipping baby-oil-slathering silver-raft-lounging kids — I spent my summers buried indoors reading Danielle Steel novels. And, even more unfair, it turns out one of the pock-causing culprits is those birth-control pills I’ve been gulping daily since puberty. At least they’re good for something.
And that’s when I laid down one hundred sixty smackers for a new skincare line called — get this — REVERSE. Four food-color-size bottles that are supposed to last all of two months filled with magical potions concocted by mad scientists to fade my spots, even my tone (whatever that means), erase my wrinkles, and turn my giant freckle of a face into a creamy baby’s butt.
Um, just after ripping and melting and sizzling all the bad skin away. The warning labels scream something like USE ONLY A FLEA-SIZE PORTION AT FIRST, AND THEN ONLY EVERY THIRD DAY, UNTIL YOUR SKIN STARTS ENJOYING AND EVEN CRAVING THE ITCHING, PEELING, AND REDNESS AND YOU’VE SCARED OFF ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND ANY POTENTIAL DATES. ALSO, IF YOU EVEN DARE VENTURE INTO SUNLIGHT WHILE YOU’RE USING THIS STUFF, YOUR FACE WILL TURN PURPLE. BUT DON’T GIVE UP. EVERYONE MUST GO THROUGH AN UGLY DUCKLING PHASE BEFORE SHE CAN EMERGE A SWAN.
Never mind that I have the most sensitive skin this side of a Dove commercial…skin that turns my face into a ripe tomato at the first whiff of foreign matter (read: anything other than Cetaphil or Aveeno). I want to be a swan, dammit. So REVERSE it is!
And so, without further ado, Step 1 (scrub, scrub, scrub), Step 2 (tone, tone, tone), Step 3 (dab, dab, dab), Step 4 (sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen).
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
