NoMad Blogger

I have a love/hate relationship with my skin cleanser, the evil monopoly of Proactive. It’s love in that I can use it for like, 18 months and have great skin most of the time. It’s hate in that after 18 months, like clockwork, the shit stops working, I have to go off of it for like, 4 months, deal with my skin reverting back to how it was when I was 15, spend $800 on every kind of Neutrogena facewash CVS carries and then eventually go back to the Proactive, which now magically does the job again. Seriously, this has been going on for 7 years.

One day last year, during an in-between period, I was at Macy’s buying Clinique foaming cleanser (which, if you’re in need of a new face wash, is actually pretty good), and the sales person at the counter asked me what I had been using previously. When I said “Proactive,” she went into a tirade about how Proactive is basically crystal meth and you can never stop using it because once you do your skin will freak out. Proactive doesn’t give you great skin. It makes your skin addicted to it. Your skin looks great on the surface, but it’s actually a ticking time bomb just waiting for you to think you don’t need it anymore. I liken this to the way fashion models look just at the beginning of their cocaine addictions.

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