![\"Jo](\"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Vertical_IMG-4-300x442.jpg\")
My face has always been a pretty accurate barometer for my health. A mood ring for how badly I\u2019ve been looking for after myself, if you will. Milkshake for breakfast? Spots. A week of being stressed and not sleeping? Zits. Leaving a Turin shroud of last night\u2019s un-removed make-up on my pillow? A whole buffet of pimples, blackheads and closedcomedones.<\/p>\n
But then there is also, of course, the wholly unfair monthly ordeal of hormonal breakouts – a cruel twist of my twenties after my acne-free teens, where all I\u2019d had to deal with was ashy mousse foundations and a misguided period of thinking eyebrow pencil as lipliner looked good.<\/p>\n
Before becoming a skincare evangelist, every time these monsters would arrive like clockwork, I\u2019d analyse the painful cystic lumps that plagued my chin with a 100 x magnifying mirror. Itchy, throbbing volcanoes; too shiny to cover with makeup and too tender to ignore. I\u2019d fantasise about peeling my face off so I could pop the suckers out from the other side like an ice cube tray. Instead, they\u2019d just sit there mocking me. Every potion that promised \u201cresults in just 24 hours!\u201d seemed to make my beard of zits even angrier. I was convinced skincare was a scam.<\/p>\n
Rather than shelling out for eye-watering dermatology treatments, I became enthralled by the alchemy of amateur skincare addicts posting on Reddit. Thread after thread of real people with real chin volcanoes publishing their trial and error findings. It was through Reddit I learned about purging, about chemical exfoliators, about how oils are not the enemy of oily faced people, about vitamin C – I could go on. Who knew using the same moisturiser for ten years and hoping for the best wasn\u2019t helping my situation?<\/p>\n
I was convinced skincare was a scam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I now can\u2019t imagine evenings without massaging my face with cleansing oil until I go into some kind of trance. Does this massaging really stimulate my lymph nodes and ward off wrinkles? I have absolutely no clue, but it feels really, really good. Then I swipe my chemical exfoliant across my perma-oily chin and almost hear the bacteria screaming in my pores like the Wicked Witch melting in The Wizard Of Oz. Now, when I can feel a chin volcano erupting, I am serene. This is an enemy I know and can beat. I lull my chin zits into a false sense of security by feeding them with rich oils and moisturisers, rather than trying to desperately flush them out with drying products (read: toothpaste). And once they\u2019re nice and fattened up, BAM, I hit them with a hydrocolloid patch.<\/p>\n
I used to spend my evenings doing everything but taking a needle to these gremlins and got my kicks watching YouTube compilations of professionals evacuating pores of gunk, but now I am my own entertainment. Yes, my bathroom cabinet looks like a Victorian chemistry set, yes, I probably know too much about the molecular structures of my toner, and yes, my bedroom skincare routine has become a twenty-minute ritual complete with scented candles and dolphin noises.<\/p>\n
But I ask you: if skincare is a scam then why am I glowing?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
JO’S ‘ALCHEMIST’ SKINCARE PICKS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My face has always been a pretty accurate barometer for my health. A mood ring for how badly I\u2019ve been looking for after myself, if you will. Milkshake for breakfast? Spots. A week of being stressed and not sleeping? Zits. Leaving a Turin shroud of last night\u2019s un-removed make-up on my pillow? A whole buffet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":3580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":[],"categories":[203],"tags":[198],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}