smartskin101

No matter who you are – young  or old, male or female –  having a pesky, red pimple is not hot.  I was reminded of that the other day when one sabotaged my plans for looking fabulous.  And unfortunately, those are often the type you have to ride out over the course of a few days.  That’s why I have a couple tricks I use to get me through those embarrassing days.

First line of defense: Visine.  You should always have this in your makeup bag/shaving kit.  Visine has two active ingredients: tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride (I had to sound that out, too) and potassium chloride.  Tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride is a vasoconstrictor, which causes blood vessels to constrict.  This is why it gets the red out of your eyes.  And this is also why it will get the red out of that pimple!  If there is only slight redness, squeeze a few drops of Visine onto a Q-tip and hold it on the pimple for a while. Then, let the solution air dry on your skin.  If you have a bit more redness, what I like to do is tear off a tiny square of tissue and soak it with Visine.  I fold it to just a little over the size of the blemish and then I place it on top of the pimple.  I keep this on while I finish doing my makeup.  10 to 15 minutes later, I take it off and the redness is usually entirely gone.  A word of caution – be mindful of the size of the piece of tissue you use and how long you leave it on the pimple.  I once used tissue torn to the size of my thumb print and left it sitting on my face for half an hour (until it dried out).  I was left with a completely white square between my two eyebrows.  A little goes a long way!   In the next post, I’ll tell you the second line of defense!