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I Was a Pinterest Pigeon

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Do you use Pinterest? It’s fun, and can be quite addictive, I’m told. I’m NOT addicted to it, and due to the story I’m about to tell you, I may not ever be addicted.

Because PAIN is an effective deterrent for most of us in the prevention of addictions.  And people, let me tell you: I had me some Pinterest Pain this week.

I am but a costly casualty on the highway to happiness that is the promise of Pinterest.

Because Pinterest is full of GREAT IDEAS!!! Right? You know it. I know it. We can scroll through genius idea after genius idea, and find fulfillment, beauty and happiness plastered all over its beautiful boards. Is this not so???

I’m here to debunk that little idea.

Learn from me. Learn from my mistakes. Do not travel the trail I have trod.

Here’s my tale of terrible trouble:

It was my Birthday Eve. I was home alone. My family was attending a party, and I decided to do my hair and get prettied up for the following day. Before I got in the shower, I took one last glance at a “pin” I had seen earlier in the day.

The pin/post in question has something to do with “DIY Bioré strips”. The promise of the post was this: that if you mix up a little package of unflavored gelatin and a couple of tablespoonfuls of milk, microwave it for a few seconds, and then spread it all over your face, it is like giving yourself a facial, and you can peel any blackheads or impurities out of your pores, and your skin will be baby soft.

Now, I’ve given myself facials before that had to “set” before you rinsed them off, so I was kind of familiar with that concept. And the girl in the picture on the post showed herself applying the gunk all over her entire face. Not just on her nose (like you do with the aforementioned facial strips). And she showed pictures of herself peeling the stuff off, with evidence of a successful result.

So: here’s the way my thought process went. In other words, here’s how I succumbed to the implied promise of younger, softer skin. Here’s how I became a Pinterest Pigeon.

“Hey! That sounds like something I could do tonight! No one’s home. I have the gelatin. It’s cheap to do. I bet it will be like peeling Elmer’s glue off my palm. Remember when I used to do that when I was a kid? Remember how satisfying that was? How the goal was to pull the biggest piece off I could manage, because it looked so cool? That’s the way the stuff this lady has peeled off  looks in the pictures in her post: like she just peeled strips of Elmer’s glue off her face. That would be so fun! And then, I’d have really soft, smooth, young looking skin for my birthday tomorrow! This is going to be great!”

And thus, this little lamb was led to the slaughter.

I mixed up the gelatin with the milk, microwaved it, and began applying it.

The lady in the post said that the stuff left one’s facial hair, but removed dirt and impurities from her pores.

To say that this was not my experience would be the understatement of a lifetime. I’m possibly one of the fortunate few in this life, in that I have never had to tweeze my eyebrows or remove facial hair of any type. My eyebrows, if anything, tend toward the sparse side.

Little did I know they were about to become sparser.

In applying the stuff, I inadvertently got a bit of it into the edge of one of my eyebrows. Hey, if it was like peeling off Elmer’s glue? How bad could it be?

It was NOT like peeling off Elmer’s glue.

After 15 minutes of letting the gelatin glop “set”, I began attempting to peel it off at the lower corner of my jaw. You know, the part where the peach fuzz is located.

Holy mother.

Tears sprang to my eyes and my nose began to run. This was going to hurt. And hurt big.
And I knew that in theory, I could rinse it off. But the promise, the allure, of younger smoother skin dangled before me like a carrot in front of Balaam’s ass, as it were, and I REALLY thought this would work. So…bravely…I soldiered on.

“After all”,  I reasoned, “I’ve given birth to two babies. How bad can this be?”

(I think at this point, I had forgotten about the epidurals I’d had when I’d given birth to those babies. Come to think of it, a little novocaine injection might have really been helpful during this procedure. That, or a Valium. Or both.)

Here’s how bad it could be:

It was like peeling a huge sheet of industrial strength extra sticky duct tape off my face. Every little follicle of peach fuzz shrieked for mercy. Now I’m scared when it starts growing back, I’m going to have Fred Flintstone’s Five O’Clock Shadow.

When I tried to go slowly, my skin stretched like laffy taffy. I probably have new wrinkles now that I never had before, thanks to the stretching. My jowls now approach my shoulders. In fact, I’m pretty sure that this picture will give you a sense of what I felt was going on:
Before using pore strips, this was a bulldog. Now, it’s a shar-pei.

When I tried going fast, the pain was like blinding hot, white light. But at least it was over faster that way. And my left eyebrow? Where the hair was already sparse? There’s a bald spot, that makes it look like the cherries I flambéed the other day, won.

 
I now suffer from PTRD: Post Traumatic Rip Disorder.
 
No: there will be no pictures of me to go with this post. I have some pride.
 
Could these DIY facial strips have worked well for someone? Yes, I think so. If you are prone to blackheads, have younger, thicker skin than mine, and are used to removing facial hair in other ways, I bet it would work very well for you, as long as you keep it out of your eyebrows. I think, in particular, if you only use it like the Bioré strips are supposed to be used: on your nose or chin area, you wouldn’t have a bad experience at all. Hey: the lady who wrote the blog post seemed to like it enough that she wrote about it, and shared it with the entire internet. 
 
Of course, she could be a sadist, getting a whole lot of demented glee from Pinterest Pigeons like me. But I don’t really believe that.
 
I actually really DO like Pinterest. But I will be a little more careful next time I think I’ll try a great new idea.

P. S. Maybe you should pin this article….

LOL!

Womens Health Forum

Sunday 3rd of January 2016

I use Pinterest for gathering funny Tumblr posts, arts & crafts ideas, and artwork/comics/fanart/etc. for my favorite fandoms. I think Pinterest is a fun site to spend spare time on and discover new things!