No Vaseline (Not an N.W.A. Diss)

Sorry for the long lapse between posts, but I've been quite the busy bee over here. What, between playing the new Grand Theft Auto extension pack, writing reviews over on MakeupAlley, and staring off into space for hours on end, it's a wonder I even have time to catch up on my beauty rest. In all seriousness though, if sleep makes you beautiful, I should be Helen of Troy at this point.

The past month has brought me something of a beauty revelation. In the past, I've always been pretty particular about which products I've used on my face, but far more lax about the quality of products I use in the shower. Why use a high-end shower gel when it's literally money going down the drain? However, I've also been cursed with sensitive skin, and my occasional eczema has led to me dropping trou for a cortisone shot in a dermatologist's office more than once. And as the glamorous life of an unemployed person does not allow for such luxuries as emergency medical insurance, I've been forced to take some pretty DIY measures. Call me frivolous, but a quality body cleanser and moisturizer take less out of the monthly budget than a COBRA payment.

Over the years, doctors have given me some pretty random advice about how to keep my skin problems at bay: slather on Vaseline, lie out in the sun, avoid spicy food, scrub with Ivory soap, spin around twenty times while clapping your hands, and whatever else. I've tried it all. Up until a few weeks ago, it never occurred to me that my eczema might be a physical reaction to anything but stress.

But then came the revelation. One day my partner and I were arguing about baby diapers, as we non-parents who never intend to become parents are obviously wont to do. His mother used disposables, while I insisted that the superior way of dealing with diapers was to use cloth and have them whisked away in a magical van like my mother did. He asked why my mother would do that, and there was the 800 pound gorilla: "Because disposable diapers gave me a rash."

I have spent 33 years on this earth. I can tell you the exact year that movies I've never watched were released, and can deduce the year television shows were filmed based upon which color of nail polish the actresses are wearing, but it took me that stupidly long to figure out what was sending me crying to the doctor every couple of years. About 30% of a disposable diaper is made up of petroleum, and petroleum or mineral oil are found in the vast majority of drugstore shampoos, cleansers, conditioners, moisturizers, and other cosmetics. Most people, of course, have no physical reaction to petroleum products- I'm just unlucky that way.

Still, I decided to work with my theory and stick to using only petroleum-free products on my body. (Boscia's Jujube line has been incredible.) Well, what do you know? Any dry skin or redness I had disappeared within days, and knock on wood, it has not come back.

It's pretty hard to conduct an online search about petroleum allergies without encountering a hornet's nest full of hippies and other assorted weirdos who advocate using baking soda instead of toothpaste and going "au naturel" on the deodorant route. Now, I won't subject anyone to that, and I don't hold the cosmetics industry responsible for my lifetime of unmitigated torture and agony. I reserve that resentment for the host of medically trained professionals who ignored my allergy charts in favor of telling me to bathe in oil (that is), black gold, Texas tea. This is what I'd like to say to them.

An Introduction

First things first: your lipstick is neither empowering nor degrading. Anyone who says otherwise is either crazy or trying to sell you something.

I'm probably a pretty unlikely person to be starting a beauty blog. I'm no fan of Sex and the City, I rarely wear high heels, and I'm not much for diets, tanning, or plastic surgery. After years of sad attempts, I still haven't perfected a smokey eye- I aim for Louise Brooks, but keep hitting Nancy Spungen.

Despite all this, I find an inordinate amount of pleasure in beauty products. I research them, I consider them, I buy them, I use them, I treasure them, I review them, I toss them aside in anger, and I think about them as I'm falling asleep at night. The dinky bathroom of my sparse New York City apartment teems with what my boyfriend likes to refer to as, "all those goddamn little bottles." In a few years, I'll probably be giving the Collyer brothers a run for their money.

It wasn't always like this. As a kid, I had a healthy appreciation for the Tinkerbell Brush-On/Peel-Off nail polish just like everyone else, and I moved on to cheapo drugstore cosmetics and lots of really shitty fragrances by junior high. To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, here's a chronological rundown of the early years- my own personal vie en beauté, if you will.

1980-ish: My Christmas stocking comes packed with the aforementioned non-toxic nail polish and a small bottle of the dime store classic Blue Waltz. I promptly ignore these products in favor of gnawing on the feet of Donnie and Marie Osmond dolls.

Around 1982: With the Blue Waltz long-ago poured into the garden in a misguided attempt to help the flowers grow, I raid my mother's fragrance collection and dump a bottle of Shalimar in my bath in an effort to emulate the fancy ladies I've seen bathing on television.

1985: Perhaps still not over the Shalimar incident, my mother decides that she's tired of both my stick-straight hair and my howling about being forced to sleep in rollers to get that "cute Shirley Temple look." To remedy this, she gives me a perm. I'm sure you can imagine how well this turned out. To compound the travesty, and in a state of denial, my mother declares that I'm old enough for perms but too young for hair products. Dark times.

1987: I've saved up enough of my allowance to stockpile a healthy collection of Wet 'n Wild, Maybelline Shine Free, Kissing Koolers, Kissing Potion, and whatever else could be had for a rock bottom price at the drugstores in a small logging town. A good portion of these products are confiscated by my hard-nosed sixth grade teacher, who apparently doesn't care much for 11 year-olds in purple eyeshadow and peach lipstick. I later exact revenge by displacing his ridiculous comb-over with water during a swim class, but it's a hollow victory.

1988: Having learned from the loss of my 99 cent treasures, I know well enough to keep the real gold (my extensive fragrance collection) safely at home. Over a few years, I managed to amass pretty much everything on the market that would appeal to the discerning nose of pre-adolescents: Love's Baby Soft, Love's Musky Jasmine, Love's Fresh Lemon, Love's Rain Scent, Exclamation, Electric Youth, Verve (Softly Oriental), a variety of Bic fragrances because they had a French-looking commercial, Malibu Musk, and Colors de Benetton for those special school dances. My grandmother tried to class this up with the occasional White Linen or Anais Anais, but my heart belonged to the trash.

Very early 90s: Because I was a young lady now (and because she was sick of my face looking like a chalk drawing), my mother took me to the MAC cosmetic counter at Nordstrom in Portland, Oregon. A drag queen gave me an age-appropriate makeover, and I quickly discovered the charms of neutral eyeshadow and lipstick in colors not found on a candy necklace. This stuck with me.

Also very early 90s: Sassy magazine became my bible for beauty advice and pretty much everything else around this point. I know a lot of you are with me on this. Who else ran out to buy Chanel's Egoiste and Clinique's Black Honey because you read about them in the About Face section? I thought so.

1991-1994: In an effort to establish that mythical "signature scent," I asked every guy I dated which was his favorite perfume of the selection I wore. Bypassing classics like Yves St. Laurent's Paris and not-so-classics like Ultima II's Sheer Scent, the fellows all went straight for (insert drumroll here) The Body Shop's White Musk. You heard it from me, folks: adolescent males of the early 1990s preferred White Musk to Sunflowers by 5:0.

1994: Having little regard for subtlety or timelessness, I proudly sat for my senior photo wearing MAC's Verushka. If you're not familiar with the product, just know that the finish was as dry as a bone and the color went a little something like this. In retrospect, I should have gone with the Black Honey.

In any case, that's how it started. Your own early histories probably aren't too far off, and I would love nothing more than if you shared a bit about them with me.

In future entries, I plan to write reviews, rants, reminisces, and futile complaints about the fact that every non-paid beauty blogger seems to start all reviews with, "Now, this is just MY OWN OPINION..."

I hope you'll stick around.