NON-makeup for Men

Sometimes I wonder, do guys ever want to enhance or perfect the look of their face & skin? Are they ever jealous watching their women primp & polish & make everything look just a little bit better? (Yes, these are the kind of thoughts that cross my mind). But I'm not talking about the occasional dab of cover-up over a honking zit (dont worry guys, I'm pretty sure you've all done it before)... what I'm talking about are the imperfections like redness, uneven skin tone, enlarged pores, undereye circles... all that stuff that combines to make your face look not so hot, but maybe you dont even notice? Theses concerns are the cause of my complaints of having "bad skin" even when it's perfectly clear without a blemish in sight. BB Creams have been all the rage for a little while now & in my opinion, the jury's still out on exactly how revolutionary they are. The millions that I've tried so far are good... but I'm not writing home about them. Most of them to me just feel like makeup, not a face perfecting wonder cream. Until I realized that Per-fekt has a translucent version of its skin perfection gel! https://perfektbeauty.com/skin-perfection-gel# And the name is SO accurate - it is absolutely skin perfecting. Guys, I know it kind of looks like makeup & maybe Sephora scares the hell out of you, but this stuff is worth it. Enlarged pores, redness/uneven skin tone, fine lines, excess shine etc. are all dramatically diminished with just a thin layer of this gel. And you still look naked faced. I know you think you dont need it, & maybe you're blessed with a killer face and perfect skin (damn you!) but for those of us who are actually human, this gel is genius. So buy it for your girlfriend & then steal it if that's what it takes... just use it. I guarantee you'll put it on your face once & if you arent amazed by how great your skin looks, I promise your lady will notice. And she'll be jealous. And then you'll have to share your secret (or tell a little white lie...).

Fool-proof Palette

Whoever invented the first make-up palette is my hero. What better than a whole bunch of shades of shadow or gloss all together in one handy-dandy compact? No more carrying around 5 different lip glosses or having to rummage through your makeup bag to find the two different shadow compacts you want to use amonst all the clutter. But who hasn't bought a palette, taken it home, & realized that you have no idea what colors go together, how to wear them or why you bought something so overwhelmingly confusing. Okay, maybe that's a tad dramatic, but I've definitely had my excitement over a palette purchase smashed to smithereens when I realized the options were just too many and my makeup application skills were just too lacking to make sense of it all.

CARGO Cosmetics must have heard my cry of confusion because I have just discovered their Essential Palettes for eyes. http://www.cargocosmetics.com/ Each stripe of shadow is expertly labeled with a clear imprint of the words: Browbone, Lid, Crease, Outer corner. GENIUS. Why has someone not done this before? It's absolutley goof-proof. Unless you can't read, or don't know which part of your eye is which, you simply cannot make a mistake. By the time you've used enough of the shadows to erase the imprinted words, I guarantee that you've memorized which is which - makeup muscle memory anyone? The only hitch is that this brand is tough to find - www.beauty.com or the brand's website http://www.cargocosmetics.com/products/eyes/essential-palette is definitely your best bet!

Zit Happens

There is something day-ruining about waking up with a zit (at least for me). But seriously, I think we can all agree that when you wake up & see a giant mountain of clogged pore on your face, it's like having your coffee with a side of huge bummer. For the ladies, we'll spend a good portion of our morning trying to cover it with heavy duty cover-up over powder over cover-up until we've made the facial flaw exponentially more noticeable now that it's caked over with makeup. Not to mention the fact that once you remove all that makeup, your blemish is guranteed to be worse than when you started! For the guys, most likely the reaction to a zit (if it's even noticed) is to move on with the morning without a thought. Or to pop it. I highly recommend refraining from any picking or popping if you can (not that I take my own advice 100% of the time...). One time my boyfriend asked me why I hadn't told him that he had a zit... to which I replied that the zit in question was so high up on the side of his forehead that I frankly can't see up there very often with our serious height difference!

Whether you're a guy or a girl, whether you obsessively try to cover up your zit or honestly could care less that you have one, Mario Badescu Drying Lotion http://www.mariobadescu.com/drying-lotion should be living in your cosmetics collection for moments like this. This will be the best less-than-$20 you ever spend. I stumbled across this stuff ages ago in the bouts of a high school breakout. Once my skin cleared itself up with age, I totally forgot about this miracle worker. Recently, I once again had a need for some serious zit-zapping help & was walking around near my office & stumbled across the Mario Badescu Spa. The amazing-ness of the Drying Lotion all came rushing back to me & I burst into the spa ecstatic to once again own this insanely effective item. I think the spa workers were a bit unnerved at my unbridled enthusiasm for the Drying Lotion but I couldnt help myself. I rushed home, took off my makeup & carefully dabbed on the pink "sediment" as they call it. After a few hours, I washed it off and my zit was literally almost gone. No joke. I used it again before bed & when I woke up in the morning - clear skin perfection. If only I had remembered my old friend Mario Badescu in my college years... I could've saved myself lots of cover-up applying time!