Month: October 2010

Since age 12, I’ve had an epic battle with acne. I was on tetracycline in high school, and Retin-A, which made me so sensitive to the sun that my face would fry off, leaving a pulpy, gory, raw mess where my nose used to be. I used tinted Clean & Clear and really believed it covered up my zits, though I probably looked like I had a pigment disorder since it came only in ‘tanning bed orange’.

I spent the year I was 17-turning-18 in Italy. Not only did my host family members, teachers, and—hey!—even strangers on the street tell me I was fat, but my advisor’s husband looked at my face at one point and said, “Brufoli!” (That’s “Pimples!” to you and me.) And he ran to the pharmacy to get me some medicated face cream.

I’ve tried a number of Neutrogena products:

I’ve tried stuff As Seen On TV:

And knock-offs of stuff As Seen on TV:

Alas. I’m 35, and I break out like a high school sophomore.

Last weekend, I caught part of The People’s Pharmacy, and this dude was saying that, in cultures where the people don’t eat refined sugar, even the teenagers don’t break out.

First dairy.

Then gluten.

Now I’m going to have to stop eating sugar.

Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here eating my salmon and alfalfa sprouts. Crying.

Goddamn you, Joe and Terry Graedon!

P.S. Look up their podcast on iTunes. Some are labeled “clean”, which others are “explicit”. Hahahahahahahaha.