skincare

Hello everyone, and welcome to our first installment of Crassthetics, where I answer your questions about clothes, makeup and whatever other shallow subjects you guys find confusing. If you have any nagging queries that you’d like addressed in future editions of this column, please send them to [redacted]. Also, many of the products I recommend below can be had through Amazon, so if you’re going to try them out, I’m sure that the Powers That Be would appreciate if you’d investigate what can be found through the affiliate link box at right before using the links I’ve provided to regular retailers.

I received a bunch of questions for this first column, but if I didn’t use yours, don’t worry; if it’s something I can answer, it will show up in this space in the future. Also, don’t be embarrassed! All questions will be kept anonymous, and I will not tell anyone about that gross problem that you have with your feet. For now, let’s hit some of the basics concerning properly fitted pants, eye makeup application and those pesky, unsightly ingrown hairs.

How do you find jeans that don’t strangle your muffin top? I am a size 14, but it’s only my waist measurement that makes that. The rest of me (hips, thighs, and all) is about a size 10. So everything that fits my waist is way too loose everywhere else, but anything that fits my hips and thighs cuts into my nasty stomach.

I think that some people are going to immediately reject my answer to this question, but hear me out: Jeggings. Yes, the reviled, painted-on quasi-pants favored by Ugg-wearing teens at the mall. But! Not all jeggings are a crime against humanity, just the cheap ones at Wet Seal. If you shop carefully, no one will even know that you’re wearing jeggings instead of regular jeans.

Follow my logic here: All clothing is cut on an hourglass fit model. If regular jeans are made to fit the waist and legs of an hourglass model comfortably, and jeggings are made to fit at the waist and be skintight through the leg, then for someone whose hips and thighs are proportionally thinner than her waist, shouldn’t the legs of jeggings fit like regular pants? As it turns out, I have exactly the same body type as you do, and that logic is indeed sound. Jeggings provide the more narrow fit you need, but they still give at the waist because of the stretch content of the material.

There are two keys to careful jeggings shopping: Stick to dark, non-distressed washes and pay close attention to the fabric content. jeggings that still look like real jeans will have a cotton percentage well into the 90s. My favorite pair is 96% cotton and 4% spandex, and not even my mother (she of the passive-aggressive, “Is that what you’re going to wear?”) had a clue that they weren’t regular pants. If the pants contain more than two materials, move on.

And yes, jeggings are usually skinny jeans, another product to which many people seem averse from the start. You don’t have to be skinny or particularly young to wear skinny jeans, though, provided that they fit your correctly. In fact, if your legs are slender compared to your torso, skinnies will probably be particularly flattering on you because they’ll highlight an area that can help you create an optical illusion of overall slenderness. Pair them with a slightly loose tunic-length top for maximum effect.

Another thing you want to consider is the rise of your pants. Lower-slung waistbands are more likely to cut across an unflattering part of your body, so choosing pants that come up an extra inch or two will also help contain any wayward chub. But really, give jeggings a chance. They come in higher rises too, and there are plenty of pairs that have a regular button and fly like non-stretch jeans. Jeggings are the only growth-producing sector of the denim industry for a reason, and it’s not because those mall-loitering teenagers we mentioned have gobs of extra cash to buy them. Everyone from Old Navy to J Brand makes them now, so finding them in your size and price range should be fairly easy.

I would like to know the foolproof way to keep mascara/eyeliner from smudging, from which product to use, to how to apply. I use waterproof mascara and waterproof eyeliner and yet, it still smudges!

Listen up, because I’m about to change your makeup-wearing life: Urban Decay Primer Potion. It costs $18 at Sephora and will cement any eye makeup in a three-block radius to even the oiliest of lids. (I should know; the oiliest lids in the whole wide world belong to me.)

You just wipe a tiny bit on your eyelids before you do your makeup, let it dry for a few seconds and apply your eyeliner and shadow as normal. For maximum effect, use a liquid or gel eyeliner, which is far less prone to smearing, smudging or flaking in the first place. If you’re going to go liquid, my favorite is Dior’s eyeliner pen. Gel? MAC Fluidline and the MAC 266 Angled Eyeliner Brush. Application of either of those products has a learning curve over a regular pencil, but once you get the hang of it, the results are phenomenal.

If you’d rather stick with a pencil, my favorite high-end option is Make Up Forever Aqua Eyes, although it will still smudge a bit without the primer under it. If you want to stay in a drugstore price range, Covergirl makes a mechanical pencil liner that’s surprisingly budge-proof. For shadow, I tend to gravitate toward MAC’s wide range of choices, although virtually anything will stick like a champ with Primer Potion under it. There have been plenty of nights where I’ve fallen asleep without taking my eye makeup off (Bad, Pssshwhatever! Bad!), and the next morning, it still looks almost perfect. Sometimes I even go place with it like that.

Mascara is a little trickier because I’ve found that many of the drugstore products labeled as “waterproof” still give me terrible raccoon eyes. (The same is true for eyeliner, unfortunately). L’Oreal Telescopic is okay for days when it’s not humid and you don’t think you’ll sweat, but if you want the holy grail, you’ve got to go with Chanel Inimitable Waterproof. Say it with me, ladies. Chanel. Inimitable. Waterproof. It costs an arm and a leg (or $30, if you have it), but it’s about a million times better than any of that similarly priced DiorShow foolishness that magazines always tell you to buy. I’ve tried just about every Dior mascara known to man. Don’t make the same mistake. It’s an expensive one.

Okay, so I’m prone not only to ingrown hairs in my beard, but hairs that grow parallel to the skin and then become infected. Or maybe that’s the same thing. I use an exfoliant (Clinique for Men’s Face Scrub) and little else. I’m reluctant to put too much in the way of chemicals on my face for fears of making a bit of photodamage worse. One dermatologist told me to dig them out with tweezers, but that seems…absurd? ill-advised? prone to scarring? Anyway. Any suggestions or pointers?

This answer isn’t just for the menfolk, because ingrown hairs plague all of humanity, as far as I know. You said that you’re tentative about using chemicals, but I’ve been using Tend Skin for several years on my extremely sensitive, persnickety, pale skin and have never experienced any irritation or discoloration. (And not to put too fine a point on it, but I’ve used it in some…err…sensitive areas.) There’s a bit of momentary burn if I use it right after I shave my legs or when irritation has already had a chance to set in, but it’s well worth the result: A near-complete end to razor bumps and ingrown hairs. I’ve tried every exfoliator on the planet (or at least it seems that way sometimes), and nothing works as well at preventing irritation as a little dab o’ Tend Skin. Buy it at Sephora and use it in an inconspicuous spot; if you don’t like it or you’re still nervous, Sephora will let you return practically anything.

If you want to exfoliate better without using chemicals, then get yourself a pair of exfoliator gloves from The Body Shop. They’re super inexpensive and can be reused a million times as long as you keep them clean, and it’s difficult to get a more thorough non-chemical exfoliation. You don’t have to use them every day, but once or twice a week with my regular soap has made a big difference in the smoothness of my skin. They can also be used on your legs, arms or anywhere that you have rough skin or problems with ingrown hairs.

As far as removing hairs that are already ingrown goes, your instincts were right about your dermatologist’s advice to dig them out with tweezers. That will create a tiny scab and possibly a temporary scar, and while the spot is healing, the hair will likely grow in again and be unable to penetrate the surface, causing the problem to repeat itself. Positively Sisyphean, right?

Instead, if you need to remove the hair, you’re going to need a needle or safety pin, a sterilizing agent and a pair of good tweezers. Because picking the hair out, even very carefully, can introduce bacteria into your skin and make the area infected, either wipe your needle down with alcohol or heat it with a lighter until it glows. Then, gently poke the needle or pin at the hair in an effort to bring it up above the surface. After it’s free, pluck it with the tweezers. If you need a tweezer recommendation, suffice it to say that there’s a reason Tweezerman is so famous.

That method creates the least amount of disruption in the skin, which means less irritation, less scarring and fewer future ingrown hairs.

Thus concludes our first installment of Crassthetics, but remember, there will be more. Well, if you send me your questions, anyway. Amull85 at gmail dot com. Do it, fool.

Photo via Flickr