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Skin Problems

“My skin always breaks out.”

“Mine’s too oily.”

“Mine’s too dry.”

It is a lamentable paradox that as babies we nearly all have perfect skins (at a time when it really does us little good), but as teen-agers most of us are beset with one kind of a complexion problem or another. It seems a cruel state of affairs, but it is not one that has to be put up with.

I know that there are teens who think they have to be stuck with splotchy skins, just as I know there are teens who think that “baby fat” is a phase they have to live through. But both are wrong. It’s just as true that teens can clear up their complexions by a routine of logical skin care as it is that teens can get rid of tubby tummies by cutting down on calories.

The two big troublemakers in skin conditions are diet and dirt. Too much chocolate and too little soap and water are the basic irritants. A program that banishes these two factors will launch any girl well on the way toward a clear and camellia-like complexion.

In the previous chapter on diet, I pointed out how important to your figure it is to eat sensibly. Well, it is just as important to your skin. A jelly doughnut will not only add pounds, it will also promote pimples. The food you eat every day will affect your complexion every bit as much as it affects your waistline.

If you stick to the daily allotments of food that were suggested to you before, you will be laying the groundwork for a good glowing skin. By eating the necessary amounts of green vegetables and fresh fruits and by lowering your intake of sticky sweets and greasy fried foods, you will be doing two good turns: one to your face, the other to your figure.

Even serious skin conditions like acne can be aided by proper diet. Acne, of course, must be treated by a doctor, since it involves more knowledge than any layman has. No teen-ager should take it upon herself to fool around with acne. But a teen-ager who is so disturbed will find that one of the first things a doctor will tell her to do is to keep a careful check on what she eats. If diet can help acne, think how much it can do for the ordinary, commonplace garden variety of skin eruptions.

Stated broadly, a good complexion demands absolute cleanliness. This cleanliness can be divided into two parts: inner and outer. Inner cleanliness is what is gained from proper eating habits. It means that your body is healthy and functioning well. It means that you are free of constipation (which is the ruin of a good skin). Outer cleanliness is what is gained from the vigorous application of soap and water. And the plain truth of the matter is that in this regard some teen-agers are slackers.

It is surprising how few of us realize how essential it is to clean our skin thoroughly. We give a few swipes with the soap and we’re done with it. Some of us, indeed, hardly even bother with the soap, and others (lost souls) bother with nothing at all. They even apply fresh makeup over the remains of the old.

No skin will stand up under such treatment. The pores will rebel. Dirt will get clogged up in them and sooner or later blackheads and hickies will start popping forth on all sides.

So if you are campaigning for a petal-smooth complexion, start each day and end each day with a clean skin. When you wash, pin your hair up out of the way so that you will have no scruples about scrubbing right up into the hairline. Before you begin make sure that you have the necessary equipment, a good cleansing cream, a soap that agrees with your skin and water, and a clean washcloth.

First start with the cleansing cream, which you should apply liberally and with upward strokes. Pulling down on the facial tissues will, after a period of time, tend to make the muscles go slack. As you work the cream into the skin, remember that the pressure of your fingertips helps stimulate the circulation of the blood. It is one part of the function of the blood stream, you know, to carry off the body’s waste materials. If the circulation is sluggish, the wastes will collect in one spot and manifest themselves in a nasty collection of blotches before you know it.

Make sure, as you rub in the cream, that you spread it over every inch and into the crevices around the nose, mouth, and eyes. Too often these areas are overlooked. If they begin to feel neglected, they will start demanding attention, like a small child who has been left out of the conversation too long. Only instead of setting up a loud wail, they will express their resentment by breaking out or getting wrinkly and dried up.

When you have thoroughly covered your face with cream, allow it to remain on the skin for about two minutes. Just sit back and luxuriate in the cool slippery feeling that it gives. Then gently begin to remove all the cream with a tissue, being careful to sop up every bit. Before you throw away the soiled tissue, take a moment to look at it. Dirty, isn’t it? Did you ever guess there was so much grime on your face? See what you’ve been missing?

The next step in the cleansing routine is to wash your face with soap and water. Use hot water for the soaping. The soap you choose should be one for your skin type— a castile soap for a dry skin, a soap with a drying agent for an oily skin. If you are not certain what to choose, ask your druggist for advice.

After soaping—no skimping there, please—rinse your face with cold water. The cold water will close the pores that have opened up with the application of the hot water. It is important to remember the cold water, since pores should always be closed after cleansing so that new dirt will not have an opportunity to get down deep. Twice a week, use ice cubes in place of the cold water. They do a very thorough job and besides they feel wonderfully slithery.

Use the routine I have outlined twice a day. It will take time at first until you get in the swing of it, but you will find each minute worth your while. However, you may discover that you are monopolizing the one family bathroom. If so, arrange to schedule your beauty ablutions when the rest of the family has business elsewhere. Get up earlier in the morning if necessary and in the evening start your program before the family is ready to go to bed.

Actually, it is essential to take the time to do a good job. Furthermore, if you faithfully follow all the steps, you will have no need of complicated cosmetics primarily designed for adult skins. When you are a teen-ager, steer clear of tricky formulas and concentrate on the two fundamental aspects of cleanliness—inner and outer. You will find that these simple routines will be more than adequate to keep your complexion glowing.

There is one note of warning I would like to sound in connection with this question of cleanliness. Keep your washcloth fresh. Scrubbing with a dirty cloth will nullify all your efforts, no matter how heartily you work. Wash your cloth every night and hang it up to dry where it can get the light and air. Do not crush it into a damp little ball and fling it in a corner where it will lie limply until the next time. A dirty cloth will spread germs and might cause infection.

Simple adherence to detail ought to keep any teen-age skin in shape. However, from time to time unfortunate major blemishes do occur. At such time, specific remedies are in order.

Let us suppose that in spite of your best efforts blackheads have begun blossoming. There is no getting around it, for there they are, the little devils. Blackheads are caused by blocked-up pores, clogged with dirt that has not been carefully enough removed from the skin. Oily skins are more susceptible than are dry ones, since dirt clings more stubbornly to an oily skin once it gets a toehold. To get rid of blackheads the remedy is twofold: reduce the oiliness and clean out the pores.

To reduce oiliness, you should, as you remember, be very careful as to your diet. Be sure to avoid rich and greasy foods. To remove dirt, there is nothing to do but to wash and wash and wash. Use very hot water which will steam open the pores (like the dentist who says “Wider, please”). With the pores open, the dirt can be dislodged more readily.

Oftentimes it is necessary to squeeze the blackheads in order to force out the little plugs of dirt. If you do so, squeeze them oh so carefully with your fingers protected by tissue. Warning—never use your bare fingers. Fingernails can cause infection if they are not antiseptically clean. It is far better to take the precaution of using the tissue and not run this risk. After squeezing, rub the skin with ice cubes. As I explained before, they will cause the pores to contract.

Once you have squeezed a blackhead, do not irritate it by picking at it. If an itchy finger starts to wander in the vicinity of your face during study period or during an idle hour when you are listening to the radio, stop it dead in its tracks. You can do immense harm by opening up an irritated skin area with a dirty nail. Infections can be introduced which will really make your skin a problem for the specialist.

Blackheads occur most often at the nose and chin, because those two areas tend to be the most oily and are the most inaccessible for a thorough cleansing job. Keep a close watch over those danger spots. It is easier to prevent a blackhead than it is to cure one.

Permission to squeeze blackheads, it must be understood, does not carry blanket permission to squeeze everything in sight. Hickies must never be squeezed. Unlike blackheads, hickies contain pus, which, if sufficiently irritated, can erupt in even more monstrous form and cause excessive damage to the skin, to say nothing of leaving ugly scars. Hickies should be treated with great respect.

The best treatment is one that dries them up. In the summer the sun will often take care of this for you. Otherwise, there are two preparations which will do the job at anytime of the year. If you have a dry skin, a dab of zinc oxide, which you can buy at any drugstore, will clear them up in short order. If you have an oily skin, a smear of calamine lotion, also available at any drug counter, will do the same. Keep applying these remedies until the hickies have vanished: by no means get impatient and start squeezing.

Whiteheads, although not as large an eyesore as hickies, or as blatantly evident as a blackhead, are nonetheless unpleasant because they mar the smooth surface of the skin. These are caused by sluggish circulation of the blood and niggardly massage. Exercise your fingertips and rub away those little bumps, which only represent lumps of waste material collected under the surface of the skin.

Many times just plain oily skin is the bane of an otherwise good-looking complexion. Somehow the skin never seems quite clean. This condition is sometimes related to changes in the body patterns, but it can be corrected. It is not a phase you have to live through. Proper measures will help counteract it.

In addition to a careful diet I recommend a good cleanser—one that will dig down deep and get out the dirt. I also stress constant washing, not just twice a day, but in between times as well. Say once before lunch and once again after school. It is imperative to remember that you must change your makeup often so that it cannot get rubbed into the pores and clog them up. Never apply new makeup over old if you have an oily skin.

Teens with an oily skin can never scrub too much. Soap and water are their best friends. On the other hand, teens with dry skin should cut down on soap and water and use cream in their place, although they must be just as scrupulous with their cleansing routine. They should use castile soap and water twice a day and a good rich cream in between.

To help along a dry skin, teens so troubled should apply baby oil at night before going to bed. Baby oil is an excellent skin aid. In summer it can be used liberally to counteract exposure to the drying rays of the sun, which cause many skins to shrivel up like prunes. The rest of the year it need not be used quite so freely, but a thin layer of it each night will work wonders.

When it comes to skins that are part oily, part dry, sort of Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde skins, treat your face as if it were more oily than dry. Adhere to the frequent-washing routine outlined previously, and then, to soothe the Sahara areas, swab those spots with a little baby oil.

Some teen-agers complain of mysterious skin afflictions. They have pimples and rashes which do not seem to fall into any of the normal categories. These mysterious blemishes are sometimes caused by unhealthy scalps. If such blemishes break out at the temples, the forehead and at the nape of the neck, the chances are that it is your scalp that is at fault. Proper care of the scalp and hair will be treated in the next chapter, but it is well to point out here and now that the two problems are interrelated.

As a matter of fact, it is worth remembering that no single beauty problem can be isolated from any other. What you eat affects your figure, your skin, and (as you will find out later) your hair and even your nails. How clean you are determines how smooth your skin will be and also how glossy your hair will gleam. In beauty, as in geometry, everything correlates.

In the long run, it is a good thing to have all of your bodily functions so intertwined. It makes your beauty program so much easier. In a sense you are killing several birds with one stone. A salad does a good turn for your face as well as your figure—daily death-to-dirt scrubbing removes grime as well as stimulating circulation.

In actuality, then, beauty is lots more than skin deep. Beauty is as deep as you are. Beauty is all of you, your face, your figure, your skin. More than any other part, though, your skin will be the barometer of your beauty weather. It will tell you how well you are keeping to a beauty schedule. A broken-out complexion is a sure sign that you have slipped up somewhere. It is an indication that you have eaten too many sweets or skimped on cleanliness. Remember to be diligent in your daily habits, and your reward will be a smooth, silken complexion (and, not incidentally, a fine face and figure).