CHENNAI: Let’s be honest, we’re no strangers to being self destructive in the name of beauty. Tweezing, flat iron burns and magnifying mirrors included. It’s time to step away from these demonic mirrors, ladies. I’m not thrilled to admit this, but up until a few years ago, I used to spend time studying my face in these mirrors…looking for clogged pores and stray hair, and then take not one, but two pairs of tweezers — one slanted and one pointed — and go at it. I’d perform mini surgeries on myself with a frightening amount of pressure, picking on every pore into oblivion.
For the next time you’re pressed up against these intense 10x mirrors, bringing in the Great Eyebrow Tragedy of 2021; I request for you to remember two things. First being, nobody you actually want in your life (besides a toddler with no sense of personal space) is going to be that up close in your face. No one on this planet is going to notice the crap you’re inspecting, I promise. Secondly, torturing your skin, squeezing every last pore until it’s damaged, inflamed and bacteria-ridden is hardly the solution.
These anxiety tools from hell promise little apart from distorting your reality, one pore at a time. In fact, the things you are ferociously picking on, thinking are whiteheads, might not even be whiteheads. “To the untrained eye, milia and whiteheads look similar, and can be tempting to extract at home, leading to worsening of the condition. Skin lesions like milia require proper dermatological intervention,” says Dr. Geetika Goyal, consultant at Clinic Dermatech.
Then you also have the confusion between blackheads and sebaceous filaments aka pores with sebum in them. Allow me to explain: your pores produce sebum to keep skin hydrated. Removing it via extraction or alcohol laden toners which dry out the skin, sends signals to your body that it isn’t, in fact, producing enough sebum and needs to amp up production. So, more sebum comes your way. It’s a nasty cycle, really. When you treat these filaments like you would a blackhead, or when you start extracting at home, you essentially run the risk of stretching your pores out, inviting a whole new world of dirt and bacteria. There you have it: stop squeezing. Throw out your extractor. Burn the magnifying mirrors. Or you know… give it to someone you don’t like, I won’t tell if you don’t!