I have sensitive but acne prone skin and as I get older it sometimes looks blotchy and dry.
All you do is take some non-coated aspirins and add enough water to make a paste. If you add some pure Aloe Vera it stays together better, smooth on your face for about 20-30 mins. It make flake off a little, don’t worry. As you rinse off, use the scrubbiness as an exfoliant.
WARNING - if you have some pimples under the surface this may cause them to come out, but they will go away fairly quickly.
Threading. I’d always gotten my eyebrows waxed, and hated the 2 hours of redness, the pain, the funky way my skin felt afterward. A friend talked me into getting my eyebrows threaded. I actually started getting compliments on my eyebrows. Then I started getting the lip threaded. It actually hurts a little more than waxing, but I’m only red for half an hour, and my skin feels nice and soft since I didn’t just get a layer ripped off.
I’m going to try the biotin tip. I have soft weak fingernails that just rip off at any excuse.
I tried threading but agree, it was worse than waxing for me in terms of pain. But since I don’t usually get redness or pain on my skin I do it–plus, I like the layer of skin being removed. I feel so smooth afterward. Either way though, the results are great.
I forgot about this, but aspirin masks really are awesome.
If your skin is particularly acne-prone, a tiny amount of tea tree oil in the aspirin mask works wonders. But I do mean TINY amount, you only need a drop and more than that will hurt (literally) more than it will help.
I happen to like Aveda’s Green Science firming eye cream– a little goes a long way, and it keeps the delicate skin around my eyes feeling soft but not greasy all day.
Try to remember to wear a big hat while gardening; the SPF won’t matter as much if you’ve got a big brim protecting your face, neck and some of your shoulders. When I’m doing a lot of outdoor gardening or lawn activity, I normally plop the hat on my head for some shade and sun protection. On really hot days when I’m going to be outdoors for a while, I carry one of my fancier umbrellas and use it as a parasol-- depending upon the time of year, its original use as an umbrella is handy in addition to keeping some of the effects of the sun away. Publix sells umbrellas from Totes with a guaranteed UPF 50+ if you’re concerned about that; when I had one in Tallahassee, it was literally 5 degrees cooler underneath my umbrella on 105+ degree summer days.
I have sensitive skin that’s combination with a tendency to break out. For the past year, I had been having a lot of trouble with my skin breaking out and having redness, and until recently I hadn’t gotten it under control. My big secret? I don’t wash my face as often and I use gentler products than I used to. My current regimen is to wash when my face feels oily or dirty with Dark Angels cleanser, follow with Breath of Fresh Air toner, and moisturize with Vanishing Cream moisturizer from LUSH. Getting a regimen that was based in more natural products with fewer chemical additives made a huge difference in how my skin looks and feels.
I actually just bought some Dark Angels pretty recently, and really like it. For me, it’s a little too scrubby to use every day, but I use it a few times a week.
You don’t need expensive jewelry to look good. I’ve found some very cheap necklaces (about 12 bucks from JC Penney or something) that look very nice and last for years if you’re careful with them. That, and if a particular piece goes out of style, or it gets stolen, you don’t have to feel bad, because you didn’t spend a whole lot on it.
Your frames don’t cover a mono-brow. I don’t care what kind of frames you have. None of them are made that way. You can sport a mono-brow if you like, but understand that the frames don’t hide it.
Also - good posture! One only has to look at some Hollywood starlets (I’m looking at you, Miley and you, Maggie…) to see that all of the spectacular makeup and expensive gown won’t matter at all if you hunch over your shoulders.
If you lack the confidence, fake it. Stand up tall, shoulders straight and back and no one will know you are quaking inside. You’ll look and feel more beautiful!
I would never have thought that a unibrow could be considered an “ethnic feature”. If you don’t want to pluck or wax, that’s obviously fine, but I certainly don’t think you’re affecting your ethnic identity if you do so.
I was going to pop into this thread to say that having my brows professionally shaped has made a big difference in my appearance. Well groomed brows frame your eyes and make you look more polished.
I can’t speak for** Broomstick** (her crazy skin stories also probably contribute to not wanting to do more to her skin than absolutely necessary) but I can speak for my dad’s side of the family (Indian) and myself and my brothers (all 1/2sies) when I say that if the unibrow is an ethnic feature, then mark me down as uber ethnic. Frankly, untamed brows don’t frame your face well at all, plus it’s just part of general grooming. I’d look down on you the same way I’d look down on someone who had greasy hair and hadn’t just completed manual labor.
Forgot one thing - the best source for online beauty advice (or mythbusters for makeup) is the website The Beauty Brains. They actually have a piece on Lush moisturizers that you might wanna check out nashiitashii.
Hey, I don’t criticize people who get nose jobs, but I think it’s a shame how everyone in Hollywood seems to have the exact same nose shape regardless. It just looks odd to me.
My brows hide largely behind my glasses. As the glasses aren’t going away (poor LASIK risk, can’t tolerate contacts) I’m not sure how spending a lot of money on my eyebrows will do me much good. Your mileage, I’m sure, varies.
Not all unibrows look like they’re drawn with heavy crayon. My eyebrow gets thinner over the bridge of my nose, but it’s still there. If yours looks like it was drawn with a black Sharpie, well, OK, I see your point but “unibrow” just means there are brow hairs all the way across, not that you’ve got bushes up there.
My brows are a little heavier than average, but they aren’t rampaging all over my face. They aren’t as heavy as, say, Brooke Shields’ and her heavier than average brows never stood in her way. In fact, they’re part of what makes her identifiable.
So, do what works for you. I just get twitchy when someone pronounces that their way is the be-all and end-all for everyone else.
Look down? Really? You can have your preferences, sure, but looking down on someone because their brows are ungroomed? If you really mean that the way you wrote that makes you sound quite judgemental in a shallow way.
And it is not at all the same as greasy hair. Greasy hair means you have rather poor personaly hygiene, unplucked brows just mean you don’t subscribe to certain beauty ideals.
My mother has never plucked her brows, it wouldn’t even occur her. She hardly ever wears any make-up at all. Is my mother less beautiful than all the primped, straightened and preened women I see here in Italy (think, say, Donatella Versace) with matching designer doglets? In my opinion my mother is much more beautiful.
You seem to be oddly sensitive about this. First of all, do you really think grooming your brows is analagous to getting a nose job? I think it’s more akin to shaving your armpits. Secondly, I hardly break the bank on my eyebrows. I spent $30.00 three years ago to get them professionally shaped, and I can now maintain the shape myself with tweezers. Thirdly, when did anyone say that that it was the “be-all and end-all”? We’re exchanging beauty tips that we think make us look better, and a few people have said that waxing their eyebrows makes them look better. If anyone is being militant about the eyebrow thing, it’s you with your ethnic obliteration comment.
On to other beauty advice, I also just tried the new Oil of Olay eye roller thingy. It’s an eye cream that you roll on your under eye area that’s supposed to reduce puffiness and fine lines, and by gosh, it works!
It’s not so much what you said, but comments like:
Seriously, there are people who regard others as unkept and look down on them because they don’t “groom” their eyebrows? “Grooming” here not meaning clean but rather “yanking hairs out by the roots”. If you don’t pull hair on your face out by the roots you lack general grooming? When did THIS become the new standard?
I don’t conform to beauty standards that require me to endure physical pain on a regular basis. At least a nose job stops hurting for good once it heals. You don’t see anything wrong with a culture that encourages women to hurt themselves on a regular basis in order to be beautiful?
And sooner or later it always comes down to “I look down on people who don’t X” or “it just seems cleaner if you do Y” implying all those who aren’t doing Y are dirty bums. I find it very disturbing how some women admit to pain, then wave it away as “you get used to it”. There area LOT of value judgments to these discussions that I was blind to in the past but that really jump out at me now.
Is ripping your eyebrow hairs out as serious as a nose job? No, not exactly, but there seems to be an expectation that the natural human body isn’t good enough and must be modified extensively, damn the pain and expense. And there is an expense - $30 might not mean much to a particular poster here, but right now, it’s a huge deal for me, and for other women who are currently undergoing financial hardship. And it’s never just one thing, is it? Get a $30 haircut and then $30 for the eyebrows and another thing and another thing and it does add up.
It’s like the women I see doing low-wage cashiering jobs with the amazing nail jobs - I’ve heard that they do that to impress the customers who have to see their hands all day. All I can think is, whoa!, don’t you have other things you should be spending your money on first? Not that I would say that because it’s none of my business what they spend their money on, I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t impress me in a favorable manner. Likewise, when I see a woman who obviously spends a lot of money on her face with this that and the other I don’t think “beautiful” but “sad” or “artificial” or 'high pain tolerance". Sometimes, “I wonder what she actually looks like without all that?”
It’s never a matter of “Oh, I like the way my eyebrows frame my face when I tweeze them” it always seems to be “it’s general grooming to tweeze your eyebrows”, the implication is “you need to be just like me and if you aren’t you’re an unkenpt filthy, greasy bum”. People on this board insist that a woman needs to slather on a mask of cosmetics to get through a job interview successfully, but if I disagree I’m “militant” or something.
I have no objection to makeup, eyebrow tweezing/threading/waxing, hair removal, etc. if YOU decide that’s what you like, what I object to are the women who come here and try to impose their choices and preferences on everyone else with the insinuation that those who don’t knuckle under are dirty slobs.
So, I guess my beauty advice today is only do something if YOU want it, not because someone else wants it or insists that you have it, and don’t spend money you can’t afford on what is, when you get down to it, luxury spending. Keeping your face clean - that’s essential. Threading your eyebrows and waxing your arms - those are luxuries. We’re fortunate to live in a world where those luxuries are commonly available and, like I said, if it’s really important to you go right ahead. But really, looking down on other people because they don’t tweeze their eyebrows? Are people serious about that?
