You've Come a Long Way, Baby - Third and final installment of my saga!

Due to personal circumstances, I put college on hold for a while and went to work right out of high school.  Suddenly, I was took subway and worked in an office in the Garment Center in Manhattan's Midtown.

Skin care, make up and glamour had to become a priority in my life.  So armed with $100, I set out on an adventure that followed me through my 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and...dare I say it...very early 60's. There is a saying that we cannot prevent the inevitable but we can certainly prolong the inevitable.  How do we do it?  How do we fight Mother Nature, Gravity and the Environment?  We didn't know about free radicals back then.

Genetics plays a big part and if you look around at your family, you can pretty much guess how well you will age.  Most of my life, I had oily skin, the kind that was impossible to control.  Over time, I was grateful for the oil in my skin because as we grow older, skin becomes drier.

I met a woman at one of the big skin care and makeup lines at Macy's who explained the importance of clean skin.  I shivered as I remembered my experience with Noxzema.  In the same way that an artist prepares his canvas with gesso and other ingredients to get the perfect surface on which to paint a masterpiece; we, too, must prepare the canvas or skin so that makeup looks flawless and complimentary to our natural beauty as we age.

Several years later, I visited Saks Fifth Avenue and was drawn to a skin care counter where beautiful women dressed in red and promoted products from France with plant extracts as their primary ingredient.  The scent of these products alone produced a feeling of beauty and wellness.  That day I graduated to a slightly higher end skin care line than the one I was using and over the years continue to use as part of my skin care regiment.  Clinique and Clarins products have remained constant staples in my life through ups and downs.

I now can spend more money on my skin care and mix and match many products that give me the anti-aging results that must be religiously, meticulously and continuously if we are going to "prolong" this process called aging.  I will share with your the results of my "experiments" with you over time.

I urge all young women to start their skin care early; it pays off in the end.  But...stay away from that Noxzema around the eyes!

You've Come a Long Way, Baby - Part Two

...and if I thought my Noxzema experience was the end of my skin care routine, it wasn't.  Around the age of 15, tiny bumps began to emerge all over my face.  "Teenage Acne" caused by hormones called androgens and increased during puberty.  Of course, hormones were wreaking havoc in my young life in more ways than one.

Dermatologists existed back then but most of my friends used over the counter medications and washes.  My mother marched down to the local pharmacy (no Walgreen's, Rite Aid or CVS in the neighborhood) to talk to the pharmacist who was the equivalent of today's primary care physician, Web MD or Google.  We left the drug store with several remedies.

A soap for cleansing the skin to use twice a day.

I loved the ad as it was a sign of the times and gave me "new hope" for the acne and condition that made my face look like a deep fryer.  You could see me coming a mile away from the shine. 

After washing my face, I would apply a lotion (a primitive version of today's toners) that burned like hell and was really an astringent.  If it was supposed to correct the ph of my skin, it was killing it.  

Clearasil also made a balm that was applied on certain "tough" pimples.  Between Clearasil, a concoction my mother applied to my ugliest pimples made out of toothpaste and apple cider vinegar (don't ask - more burn - no pain, no gain, right?) and a prayer, I hoped to wake up with porcelain skin with the touch of a baby's bottom...fat chance.  Sometimes my mother suggested I use Witch Hazel in place of the other astringent from time to time. 

This meticulous skin care routine came with a specific impossible direction: do not pick or squeeze your blemishes or it would cause scarring.  This was probably the most important part of my skin care routine but at  the age of 15, you just HAD to squeeze that pimple to get the gunk out before your friends saw it.  Indeed, it was important. I know many who squeezed a bit too hard and left a scar.

For the next three years, I religiously took care of my skin in this fashion with great discipline - no moisturizer, alcohol based toners to "disinfect" and an occasional salve on a stubborn pimple.

We've Come a Long Way, Baby - Part One

My first experience with skin care came when I was about five years old.  My mother used a "special" soap designated for her exclusive use.  It smelled heavenly and with an odd shape about it.

I was mesmerized as she would pat her face with a white cotton square she made herself.  She would move on to her foundation and rouge, yes, it was rouge in those days.  Small round tins with dark pink or red pigment she put on her cheeks.  The ever present eyebrows with a dark brown pencil and lipstick.  No moisturizer, sunscreen, nada.  Horror of horrors!

After dinner, she would resort to Pond's Cold Cream to remove the makeup.  Pond's began selling in the 1840's in a shop in New York and is still sold to this day.  Pond's had a thick consistency and she used a tissue to remove it. To this day, it's still a bitch to remove!  It does remove the make up though.   

At some point and I don't remember when or even if it she used it only periodically, I saw her use another "cleanser" - Noxzema.  Again, this was a product that went back to the early 1900's.  I think the use of Noxzema became more popular in the 60's when it was known for the slogan..."take it off, take it all off".  Pretty racy stuff back then!

I began my personal skin care about the same time I discovered The Beatles, music and boys.  Every morning, I used the "heavenly, odd shaped soap" which did indeed leave my skin soft.  At night, I locked myself in the bathroom to "draw" eyebrows on my face, put lipstick on and the bright pink rouge that made me look more like a juvenile streetwalker than the elegant makeup my mother sported.  I would then proceed to remove the make up with...you guessed it...Pond's Cold Cream. There is something about the smell that brings back the best of memories to this day.  

My skin care regimen was short lived.  For six months, I religiously had a "skin care" routine.  I began to feel grown up and looked forward to the day in which I could wear real makeup to go out.  in public. For the moment, though, it was limited to those evening moments when I locked myself in the bathroom to "paint" myself.  My mother eventually added another component to her makeup routine - Maybelline Mascara - CAKE mascara. 

A dry, black block of pigment (God only knows what it was made of).  You would wet the brush and then slide it against the block and a thick liquid was formed or a pretty thin one if you used too much water.  This was used to brush your eyelashes in an upward motion much like the mascaras of today.  

The first time I tried mascara was the end of my "skin care" for quite some time.  That night, I was going to remove my "makeup" with the pleasant smelling cream in the blue cobalt jar that my mother even used effectively on our sunburns. Being a young 13 year old and the fact that consumers didn't read labels back then, I had no way of know what ingredients were in the blue jar. Noxzema contained camphor, menthol, phenol and eucalyptus.

As I dipped my finger into the jar, the smell filled the room with the dreaded concoction that would cause me to end my "skin care" for the next five years.  Noxzema did indeed remove the mascara but as the ingredients began to seep into my eyes and cause me to put Chubby Checker to shame with my dance moves...I decided skin care was not worth the pain.  

After using numerous towels to "come clean", I ran out of the bathroom with red swollen eyes and blackened streams slipping down my cheeks.  I have never owned a jar of Noxzema since...my days of makeup and skin care were over...