Q: Hi, I have a skincare question. I get spring allergies — really strong ones to tree pollen. As a result, I get itchy, watery eyes, a runny nose, and asthma. Pretty lame. And though my skin isn't directly affected, the watering of my eyes and the constant use of tissues on my face cause the areas around my eyes and nose to chap. Like your lips chap. The skin gets rough, and very irritated; after a while, toward the end of my allergies, it'll peel like really mild sunburn. In the past I've just desperately stepped up my normal routine — moisturize twice a day, with more moisturizer. I use Clinique and always have — I adore it. When it gets really irritated, I'll put rosebud salve, Vaseline, or even Chapstick on it to soothe it. Worse, the irritated skin gets really dark and red, and makeup looks hideous on top of it. Is there anything out there that would help heal this skin without waiting out the three months of hay fever? I'm willing to spend a little cash on this. Thanks!

I have something for you! There is a product called Hydra Healer Maximum Strength Moisture Cream made by a company called Cosmedicine. The company was started by a doctor who has incredibly sensitive skin to the point where showering hurt him and he was perpetually red and flaky and gross like what you're talking about. So he made this stuff for himself, more or less. This product has 11% hyaluronic acid, which is a natural substance that bonds and binds to water. One molecule attracts something like a thousand molecules of water. So this helps you hold on to the water you have in your skin already. This is not a light cream, it's greasy as fuck, but it's probably less greasy than Vaseline or Rosebud Salve. I think you'd do very well with that. Bad news: it's $75 for an ounce. That amount should get you through an allergy season, though.

Q: I just needed to find someone that works at Sephora! If you wouldn't mind telling me a little about working there? We're opening our first Sephora here in Montreal and i just had my interview which went pretty well, the store director is new also she only started a month ago. I just wanted to know if we get reduced pay for the SOS training? Do we get paid at all? and what is training like? Is it hard to remember all the products? And how much is employee discount? And whats the uniform like? And how long do they take to call you back after an interview? The store director told me that SOS starts May 2nd so i'm expecting by next week! I always wanted to work at Sephora. How many employees are there in one store? I'm sorry for so many questions i just want to be ready!! thank you so much!

You are hilarious. So, you should be called back within a week, and if not, they don't want you. Yes, you're paid in full for training. Have you ever had a job before? Sigh. Training is like: they give you a big huge Trapper-Keeper full of information about your skin and your makeup and your eyes and all this other shit. You learn the "Sephora way" of putting on makeup and Sephora hygiene, which is basically how you handle the testers in front of the guest. Like, it's not a Q-tip. I mean, it is, but Sephora calls it a cotton-tipped swab, which is what you have to call it should you ever need to directly refer to that thingy you use to put whatever product you're helping someone test on the back of your hand. Then you throw that thingy out, never to be seen again. They will teach you, very specifically, to clean out sample jars with spray alcohol and a tissue before putting a product in them to give to guests. To put the product in the now extremely hygienic jar, you use a little spatula that you also then throw away immediately. No, it's not hard to remember the products. It all gets lodged in your brain against your will eventually. If you don't know a lot about skin care stuff, start reading all the backs of the products while you're in the store to familiarize yourself with the ingredients. Read the little Sephora catalog magazine-y thing. Or go on the website. Figure out what's up. The employee discount is 40% for Sephora brand things and 20% for everything else. The uniform looks like you got hired to work on the Starship Enterprise, but the Starship Enterprise was turned into a cruise ship and now you're a waiter. But you know what? It's very slimming. Maybe kind of like the kind of thing a female presidential bodyguard in the future would wear. I've thought about wearing it out before.

Q: I've never tried waterproof foundation before, but Sephora, break-outs, and the prospect of pool season have me tempted. Do any of Sephora's waterproof foundation/cover-up brands hold up to the pool and the beach?

Yeah, none of it is really waterproof, even if it says it is. It might be water resistant. Whatever. Your best bet is to probably wear something super heavy that will wear off more slowly. I think is good is Laura Mercier's Stick Foundation That shit stays ON. It's thicker than what you might be used to. They are not kidding when they say it is full-coverage. I tend to recommend this to older women who have a really extreme makeup look going on already. Make Up Forever's Panstick foundation might be good, too, especially if you mix it with concealer. It was made by the woman who does makeup for Cirque du Soleil, so it's going to last a lot longer than a lot of other products under adverse conditions. This range has lots of amazing shades. Alek Wek and Tilda Swanson could seriously both find something that suited them from Make Up Forever. Honestly, though? Unless you are absolutely sure that your skin is like scaring-small-children hideous and it's not just in your head, just go have fun at the pool and don't worry about foundation, especially if you're acne-prone.

Q: Now for my real beauty question. I have become a tweezing addict, I have all of my facial hair completely on lockdown without the help of lasers or chemicals. However, my under jaw and upper neck area has developed this gross pattern of dark spots. I'm African American and have a light skin tone; the only thing that I can attribute it to is how men get shaving bumps, but mine are not bumps, they are dark spots. I've never had acne and the rest of my face is great, to the point where I don't wear foundation or powder. I have oily/combo skin so i just blot and wear blush and mascara. What should I do about the spots? I'm wary of lightening creams, these seem not good for darker skin. Also, I can't NOT pluck. Letting hair grow on my neck and chin is not acceptable. Thanks for any help you can offer!

Basically, you have hyperpigmentation. Melanin is something the skin produces to fight trauma, which is the reason that people get tan from the sun before they burn. Anyway, plucking counts as trauma. Jesus, now that I think about it, you are hardcore. I can't imagine plucking hairs out from the underside of my chin. I think I'd wake up the neighbors with my shrieks. Can't you just shave it? I might do that. Anyway, there are a few things you can do if you want to lighten hyperpigmentation gently, without resorting to hydroquinone. I mean, I love hydroquinone. I'm olive-skinned and it doesn't do anything creepy to me. But if you're not into essentially bleaching parts of your face, DDF Intensive Holistic Lightener might be up your alley. Peter Thomas Roth also makes one called Potent Skin Lightening Gel Complex. These awesome science fiction sounding names make these products sound a lot more intense than they actually are. Use a Q-Tip and put it directly on your spots. It should do some kind of something for your problem.

Q: Do you use a primer? Are primers all basically the same thing, or do different ones give different results? Which ones should I spend my tax refund on?

If you have oily skin, large pores, or acne, there's a product in the skincare section by Dr. Brandt called Pores No More. You can use it before makeup or wear it by yourself. Basically it's like putting a product on that has ingredients that will treat your skin type. One of their main ingredients is still dimethicone, which is the ingredient that is in primers, typically speaking. Then Smashbox makes a million different primers in about a million different colors that all do different things. Mostly, they are pigmented for people who are trying to correct their skin tone, which I think is often some musical theater shit and not necessarily something a woman just going to work or something needs. Some of them aren't corrective, though. I'd go for one of those, like maybe the Photo Finish. That's popular. Anyway, these are also dimethicone based.

Q: I just saw your interview on Jezebel.com today for the first time. I have to say that it was possibly one of the most entertaining things I've read on a blog. I really familiarize with you because I worked for Shiseido for a long while and I, too, am a huge product junkie. ...which leads me to my next question... I'm just about to run out of my face cream (Fresh) and my eye cream (Shiseido Bio-Performance). The face cream is.. well... "eh" The eye cream I love, but am looking into other options. I have combination skin. Any recommendations? Best, Matt

Awww, it's a BOY! So cute. Anyway, Shiseido Bio-Performance is really heavy! You're not fucking around, are you? Well, I don't know much about you, but if you're into Bio-Performance, you like stuff that a lot of other people will think is super-greasy. Primordiale Optimum is a day cream from Lancome that I think is called "Primordiale" because it is typically purchased by old ladies. Anyway, that's good and thick and oughta do something. Christian Dior has an eye cream called Capture R60/80 Wrinkle that is really emollient and it has that tech sounding name that makes me think men could get into it. People swear by this stuff. It really does kind of de-puff your eyes and smooth out the wrinkles.

Earlier: The Dumbest, Most Pore-Cloggingly Ineffective Ways To Waste Your Money At Sephora
•Mineral Makeup! Lip Plumpers! Oil Cleansers! Colonics? Sephora Spy Spills All, And More!
•How I Conquered My Cystic Acne, In (Just!) 17 Painful Steps
•I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction; The Least I Can Do Is Help You
•Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

How do you use a brightening/lightening product without getting kabuki face?

Fuck yes, I love these products. I have so many of them going and I like them all. I use them just because. They work, not fast enough, but they work. You have to be really consistent to see results, and as you get older your cellular turnover starts to slow down, so if some kind of pimple trauma happens to your skin, it might take up to a year for it to go away, so I'm constantly using something like this at night. Something funny about hydroquinone is that it turns brown if you don't use it right away. I have some shit from a derm from years ago that's all brown and nasty and I put it on anyway. My boyfriend calls me "chocolate chip" when I do that because it looks like I have them on my face. I'm shameless. From Sephora, DDF Fade Gel 4 and Post-Acne Spot Lightening Gel by Murad are my favorites. You can use them on age spots, acne scars, melasma—what you can't do is use it while you are pregnant to lighten your unborn child. Also, there's no point in smearing this stuff all over your face, it's more for spot treatment. The full-face treatment with hydroquinone is how kabuki face happens. If you're trying to get rid of freckles, for example, you'd have to decide whether a face several times lighter than your body is worse than your freckles, because there's pretty much no way to avoid smearing it all over your face in that case. If you're going for a whole kabuki face system, go to Shiseido. They have a whole line called White Lucent. Shieseido are the kabuki face masters. They've been perfecting it for like 200 years.

Have you ever achieved Zen by reading the labels on Philosophy products?

Close to it, sister, close to it. Maybe not Zen so much as nirvana. What I heard about Philosophy is that it was designed by a woman who was doing aromatherapeutic massages on cancer patients who had compromised skin from radiation therapy. So she was doing these with super natural nice products and infusing them with good vibes or something, and discovered by doing this that good vibes never hurt anyone, even when they're topical. So that's the idea behind the positive messages on Philosophy products: when you read something that makes you feel good while using a beauty product, you have an extra little moment of positivity in your day, which your face may or may not end up appreciating in the long run. Some people love it, some people just like it, and some people think its bullshit. I like it.

(Ed Note: I just looked that up and it appears to be actually true. You can read more about Philosophy in this Salon piece.. God I hate those fucking messages though. I mean, as long as I'm being forced to stare at the thoughts of some blowhard for the duration of my shower, couldn't it be someone interesting, like Hegel or Jack Handy?)

Which products are the biggest money wasters?

Exfoliating cloths or cloth pillows or whatever. Those things are a waste of everything and it seems like every product line has one. There are these stupid Shiseido The Makeup Facial Cotton things that piss me off every time I see them. Ladies, you should already know not to buy things like this. Just use a motherfucking washcloth. Also, anything that claims to grow your eyelashes or brows. Talika Eyelash Liposomes is one. Revitalash is another. They are both bullshit. Your eyelashes are not going to get longer, ever.

I have 190 Sephora points. Where my free deluxe samples at?

You need to march up to that counter and say, "where's my free shit?" They scan your Beauty Insider card at the register. The gifts are good. It's usually some kind of full-sized product. The products rotate... so if it's something crap, you can hold off on cashing your points in and wait until they're offering something you want.

How do I cope with under eye circles? Does that Hylexin crap really work?

Hylexin does and does not work, and I'll tell you why: under your eyes, there are these fat pads that keep the area really puffy and full, and as you age, these pads shrink, causing you to look like Skeletor. Underneath the fat pads are capillaries, which are full of blood, and these are what you're looking at when you see a dark circle. Hylexin stimulates the capillaries which somehow lightens their appearance. So this will work if your undereye circles are a product of aging, as opposed to something hereditary or generic or structural in your face. If you're 45 and have just noticed the dark circles over the past few years, it might work for you. If you've had them since you were ten, the only thing that is going to fix the circles is plastic surgery, and the only thing that's going to help them is a good concealer. We just got a new product in at Sephora called Eye Slept by someone named Tricia Sawyer who I've never heard of before and know nothing about. It's basically a primer that smooths the undereye area to help concealer stick and prevent it from creasing in the fine lines under your eyes. It has sort of a light greenish tint to it, and it works like crazy. Personally, I feel like fuck an undereye circle. I mean, I have them, but I also choose my battles and most of the time, they are the least of my worries. Too much undereye shit going on tends to make people's otherwise good makeup jobs look like they're going to a newscaster audition. I think the best possible solution for any kind of eye issues is a cute pair of novelty frames. They not only distract everyone else from whether or not you have undereye circles, they also distract you.

What's up with the No!No!?

OMG, I just got serious training on this at Sephora camp. I loved it. I Nonoed both of my arms. It's addictive. It's not really a blade. What it is is a hot coil, or wire, that sizzles the hair off... they call it crystallizing... you know how hair is coiled up like a little nugget thing under the skin? The whole idea of the No! No! is that if you apply enough heat to the hair follicle, on top of burning the hair above the skin off, the heat will also eventually alter the follicle so that it stops growing hair entirely. You'd have to keep at it. The blade coil thingy wears out probably every six shaves or so, but I think that after you went through about six of those, you'd pretty much be hairless. Anyway, using it is pretty foolproof. There's an LED light on it that stays on only when you're at the perfect 90 degree angle contact with your skin. If the light starts blinking or goes off, you're doing it wrong. It works best if you only use it on really small areas of skin at a time, maybe an inch or two, and go over the area a few times. You'll feel some heat, a slight prickle, hear a little sizzle, and you will smell the burned—sorry, crystallized—hair. It comes with a little exfoliating buff to remove the crystallized hair from your skin, but the first few times you use it you might want to even shave afterwards. It's definitely not as effective as a razor until you've been at it for awhile. I think it would be good for someone who is super hairy, used in conjunction with shaving.

Earlier: Mineral Makeup! Lip Plumpers! Oil Cleansers! Colonics? Sephora Spy Spills All, And More!
How I Conquered My Cystic Acne, In (Just!) 17 Painful Steps
I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction; The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

Could this somehow explain why people in countries with more isolated food systems have such great skin?? (Not that I know, I'm just speculating. Uhhhh, hm.) The thing is, most acne fighting products aren't really going after bacteria at all. It seems like the point of most of them is to dry out the face and/or heal inflammation. I don't know, of course; I am no genius. But, you know, it sort of just occurred to me; for presenting us with so goddamn many words per month on skin care, these magazines have not taught us, like, anything about our skin. Do you think they figure that "remember to invest in a whole new regimen every three months or so" is all we need to know?

So, how did you finally get rid of your cystic acne?

Cystic acne is the gift that keeps on giving. I have basically come to the conclusion that I will never be entirely rid of all of it. It's the hundred years war. It's the Mongols in Imperial China. You can stave it off, usually temporarily and by employing some really extreme measures, but it's not just going to go away forever and never bother you again, especially if it's the adult-onset hormonal variety.

But your face looks fine. I saw you in Sephora, under bright lights, and I would have thought you'd have some sort of miracle formula for dealing with this judging from how your skin looked.

Are you serious? Because you don't have to be nice to me about this. It's something I am realistic about. I'm breaking out right now and the cysts are so bad that I wake up in the middle of the night in pain because they rubbed on the pillow the wrong way. They're not gone or anything. If my skin looked even partially okay, it is because I have gotten good at doing makeup, which is necessary when you have acne. Actually, I think one of the best ways to help acne heal is to wear nothing except your skin care products — if you can hack it. Obviously, I can't. I am not Mother Teresa. I just want my skin to look good. But for anyone who can hack no makeup, that's probably the best way.

Meanwhile, this is how I feel about makeup. I want to look flawless, with light, gorgeous coverage... no Hollywood Post-Nine-PM drag, no crusty MAC tranny face situation, none of that. So with acne, to avoid getting crusty faced, you need something that gives heavy coverage without giving the appearance of being heavy-coverage makeup. So a smooth formula becomes all-important. Make Up Forever makes good full-coverage foundations that I use sometimes, with Clinique's All About Eyes concealer for spots. I don't love Clinique, but I like their concealer. It doesn't crack or get crusty as much as other concealers, maybe because it's meant to be for the under eye area. Lancome Photogenic Ultra Comfort foundation is a miracle. I think it must have some sort of dimethicone in it, because it goes on really smoothly. Napoleon China Doll foundation is like $50 a tube, but it's another miracle worker for me. These things are what is getting me through my Sephora shifts under those lights right now. I'm glad you think my skin looks good— I try really hard to get it to a state of general passability.

Okay, but for us mere mortals, weapons need to be deployed, attack strategies need to be perfected. What is the most radical thing you tried?

Well, the time I stole all those cortisone syringes from the dermatologist's office, which was the most risky thing I did from an ethical standpoint. But I think I know what you're getting at: cruel and unusual punishments, and I will tell you that nothing really compared to the 30% glycolic peel I had once. I went through maybe four weeks of intense, intense peeling. And when I say peeling, I looked like I was like... a burn victim who was never going to be better again. I had a prescription for silver sulfadiazine cream to use afterwards, which is literally the same thing that is prescribed for burn victims. The whole thing was pretty horrible. But when I got through to the other side, it looked like Jesus Christ came down and touched my face. My cheeks felt like the stomach of a six year-old child. I looked really good. The results lasted for maybe three months.

What did you try next?
At some point I started visiting an acupuncturist who got me into Chinese homeopathic face reading, which basically dictates that the area in which your acne appears corresponds to larger health problems. If you have acne from the nose down, like in the chin area, your lower cheeks, around your lips— it's hormonal. If it's in the temple area [-Ha! -Moe] it's toxicity... so you should worry about your liver and your kidneys, stock up on supplements to help those things out, maybe do a cleanse. On the forehead, it's usually an issue of sebum, hair that hasn't been washed enough, that kind of thing. There are a lot of websites that can offer rough guides. (Like here.) And this is if you believe in this stuff, which I do. The face reader I saw is pretty convinced that most adult onset acne is of the hormonal variety. Chinese homeopaths will give you teas, tinctures, things to balance your hormones, herbs, acupuncture, acupressure... did the acne come back? Yeah. But here's the thing: it always does.

If most acne is hormonal, does that mean I should just go on the pill already?
Well, that's what I did next. I went on Ortho Tri-Cyclen, the birth control pill. I took it for purely cosmetic reasons. If I hadn't had acne, I'd have just told guys to fuck me in the ear or the armpit or whatever, I don't give a fuck. But it cleared up my skin for awhile. It does, of course, lower your sex drive and it makes some people crazy, although acne made me way crazier, so it's a trade-off.

Is there anything too radical you've been too scared to use?
Part of me thinks using antiandrogens to treat hormonal acne is really where it's at. You want something that blocks testosterone from being received by your skin. I think that's what gives women acne. Also, a sex drive. These drugs are no joke, though. Antiandrogens are what they give male-to-female transsexuals. Spironolactone is one of the antiandrogens some doctors use to treat acne hormonally now. It's for high blood pressure and has supposedly "feminizing" side effects so men are only supposed to take it in extreme cases. Anyway, when women take it, their acne sometimes disappears. My gut feeling is that hormone therapy is probably the best bet for getting rid of the hormonal kind of acne, but I'm sketchy about using it. That's saying a lot because I'd harvest goat piss during a full moon and bathe in it while chanting hymns to Satan to get rid of my acne. But I do sort of feel that if I need hormone therapy this intense to get rid of my acne, maybe I'm just meant to have it and that's that.

Another thing I've noticed is that no one thing works for me forever, but short-term, a lot of things work. Maybe the answer lies in just rotating treatments, mixing it up so that your skin doesn't have a chance to figure out a way to thwart your treatment. I'm planning on seeing an endocrinologist next. I'll report back on what they say about it.

What are some of the more moderate treatments sold in stores — say, Sephora — that you've seen work for other people?
DERMAdoctor is a really good line. Don't let the queer-ass names stop you from buying this shit, this is a company that is not afraid to use chemicals, which I like. Ain't Misbehavin' is their acne serum. Supposedly, it contains two ingredients that specifically fight hormonal breakouts, so if you believe the packaging you're applying some sort of hormonal inhibitor to your skin. Picture Porefect is another serum in the line that helps with what people like to call "enlarged pores." Basically, you can't shrink the actual size of your pores. But if you're aging and losing collagen and sagging, the shape of the pores will kind of stretch out. This stuff will help with that, and you'll temporarily look better. Blockhead—specifically for a patch of blackheads. It comes in a container that looks like an eyedropper. It's a really intense exfoliating serum that just goes on one patch of skin. It'll make you dry, but it'll work on the blackheads. Expect a dry, red patch for a week. In order to get rid of this stuff, a few layers of skin are going to come off and you're going to look like shit for awhile.

Kinerase's acne line is a gentler approach to healing acne... more about healing than exfoliating, which is good especially for older clients who don't feel like abrading the fuck out of their face. They all contain this topical antioxidant that's very soothing and good for people who are dry, sensitive, and flaky, but still breaking out. Clear Skin Moisture Light is nice and gentle. Clear Skin Treatment Serum smells like sphincter, but if that's what it takes to nurse your skin back to health, I know I'd walk around with the whole sphincter in my pocket.

What about acne scarring? Is there anything I can do to minimize this?
Two different concerns here. The first one being that people with darker complexions are going to deal with hyper-pigmentation, or dark spots where their zits used to be. Hydroquinone, which has recently been linked to liver cancer, is something that helps with that. You can get a 2% solution over the counter and a dermatologist will prescribe a 4%. A lot of companies are coming up with hydroquinone free products that lighten up dark spots a bit... kojic acid, licorice, naturally occurring melanin inhibitors from plants. Do they work as well? Ehhh.

Then we have our lovely pits. Microdermabrasion or a chemical peel will help with those. I think microdermabrasion will be a course of six treatments, which will run you about a thousand bucks. Peels are about $250, and that's just one. Cosmetic fillers that you'd get from a plastic surgeon. Oh, side note: I would never recommend microdermabrasion or a peel on a live crusty zit situation. It's abrading the skin, tearing it. When you do that, the tears become channels that the bacteria can swim up and infect other parts of your face. You're making an open wound situation on your skin. I don't believe in doing microderm until you're finished with your acne treatment, kind of like icing on the cake.

At what point do you just embrace your sad, homeless-looking face and say "Fuck it, I'm done?"
This is, believe it or not, something I've done a lot of thinking about. I know I'm out of control. Nice, clear skin is my obsession the way some people are into shoes, clothes, hair, sports cars, big screen TVs, whatever else they're obsessed with. I don't give a shit about any of that. I'll leave my house in a nipple ring and a diaper, but when you see me walking down the street you'll be like, "Oh! Your face looks radiant!" That's my goal. I will spend all of pennies and go into debt looking for the answer to this. When I bought my house, one of the things I liked best about it was the third floor bathroom. It's gigantic. I have a whole skin care station set up in it, with basically theater lights to make sure that I am not missing anything. I do firmly believe that all of the things I have done to stay on top of my skin situation have improved my face. It looks better than it would if I were not doing anything.

Which brings me to the homeless. You ever see a kid who's probably from Darien, Connecticut with rich parents sitting on the street with their dog and their dreadlocks and their heroin addiction and a little sign and a face full of pimples? That's what I'm talking about. They have made a choice to not take care of their skin: hence, they are pimply. The choice they made was to jump from boxcar to boxcar and re-name themselves Avocado and become a crust-punk junkie or whatever else it is that they believe in. I'm not knocking their lifestyle. I just do not personally want to look like a member of it when I am not. We all have our priorities, including the homeless, but I think it's somewhat dishonest to pretend that they are the same ones in a column about what is basically a gigantic beauty product franchise.

Anyway, getting intensely into skincare basically comes down to a lifestyle choice, too. A lot of the things you can do to yourself to help with your acne are the kinds of thing a sane person would not willfully elect to do to themselves if they were not in a desperate situation. When you fuck with this stuff, you are almost always going to look hideously fug before you look better. Once you kind of stabilize, your skin will look better. But if you have cystic acne, this is like a quest. I think a person really needs to evaluate how much their acne bothers them and make a decision, because none of the treatments are fun or anything. I mean, how bad is your acne? If you have one zit and go on Accutane, I guess that's your choice, but... even I think that's insane. But it's all about what it's worth to you. And if you can honestly evaluate whether all the peeling and flaking and burning and not wanting to leave your house is worth it to eradicate that one zit from existence, then there is no shortage of things for you to try that will more or less, temporarily, accomplish that goal.

Earlier: I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

How gross are the testers? Which ones are safe to try?

Well, testers in general are always sort of borderline gross. This is why you should get a sample from a Sephora cast member whenever possible. We have drawers and drawers full of them, and every client is supposed to leave the store with three samples. Lately we've all been living in fear of being "shopped," which is when someone working for the company poses as a client and then reports back to corporate about how the cast member did. If someone won't give you samples, that's really fucked up of them first of all, but it's also a big company no-no. This gets tricky with Color World. Makeup samples are harder to give out, but we have a few, so you should always ask. But the testers are always going to be the testers and people are always going to do what they do with them no matter where you are. I've seen people do some really gnarly things with the testers. The best is when they stick their dirty fingers right into the pots of face cream and rub it all over their faces in huge amounts in the middle of the store. Sometimes the jar is getting kind of empty and they're all in there trying to dig it out. People who are sort of possibly homeless-ish play with all the testers. I've seen tons of people pick lipsticks up off the displays and put them directly on their lips. When we see this, we're supposed to discreetly get rid of the sample and put out a fresh one, but you can't be everywhere at once so we miss things. We're also supposed to direct everyone to one of the hygiene stations with all the disposable applicators, but they don't always listen. That's also sort of why the hygiene station is there—so you can personally do something to avoid getting in on other people's nasty shit.

When will Fort Wayne, Indiana get a Sephora store?

How the fuck am I supposed to know? I am extremely busy working a register and stocking shelves and putting Prevage in my mouth. I have no idea. Call 1-877-SEPHORA. It'll get you somewhere, although I don't know where that somewhere would be.

What's the best way to get the cast members to actually help you instead of standing around talking to each other?

Ooh, they call that a "black cloud." Because we all wear black, you know, and if too many of us are standing around together, it's like we're going to rain on people's shopping experience. You shouldn't be having a hard time getting a cast member's attention or getting them to help you, and there aren't supposed to be black clouds out on the stage. Obviously black clouds happen, customer service is not perfect, blah blah blah. If you call a store and ask for Leadership, someone will very patiently listen to you complain, be really nice about it, and then probably hang up the phone and talk shit on you. Also, you're complaining about someone who is probably going to leave the company within six months anyway. This job is for children who like eye shadow. You might be able to kind of get some of them in trouble by doing this, but probably not.

What do you think about the Sephora brand eye shadows?

I like them. I use them. They have really pretty colors, and I like the texture of the creamier ones a lot. I think that sometimes, people expect them to be more highly pigmented than they are. They look like they're going to be these really bold colors, but then they go on a little more sheerly. If you want a more pigmented eye shadow, look for companies that are making those. MAC is sort of the gold standard for highly pigmented eye shadows... but I mean, MAC is no joke. Drag queens and movie sets use it. Highly pigmented is what they do. Definitely try stuff out on your hand before you buy it if you're not sure what it does. Or just return it. Sephora brand everything is kind of "meh." The brushes and stuff are cool, but the products are all really middle-of-the-line and not that exciting, especially compared to the other lines we carry.

Why are you so eager to stay at this job, get the training, and learn more? Are you an esthetician or just between jobs, or what?

Okay, what you don't understand is this: I got home from work a few hours ago and I feel like I just mainlined $3000 worth of the best drug imaginable straight into my brain. You would have to love products as much as I do to be able to stand working here. I give myself a facial every night. Ask me about my Kinerase collection. It's sick. No, I'm not an esthetician, yes, I am perfectly capable of holding down a better job. I just like my kind of crack. It's my shit. I'm working here to fuel my fancy skin care addiction. I just realized everyone who works here is eighteen. I asked them, "how can you afford to work here?" And they said, "I live with my parents." Even this woman who works here who is forty and divorced — she lives with her mom. We are all here for the same reason.

Have you always been addicted to beauty products?

Ever since I came down with adult-onset cystic acne about ten years ago. I am a very vain person, the type of person who will stay inside my house and not go into work and refuse to see my closest friends if I have a bad breakout. It is sick. But there is something so sad and homeless about acne. It just looks like something is wrong. That's why I love helping someone who comes in and looks like shit. There is a feminine joy I get from being able to say, here, I know a lot about this and I can help you. Because I can. I have dabbled in everything. I am hardcore. I will try your homeopathic aspirin-raw honey mask. I will take your supplements; I will spend hundreds of dollars on credit on fancy products and I will let you stick your acupuncture needles in me. I also don't pussyfoot around; I believe it's gonna look worse before it looks better. And I do not let obstacles stand in my way: at my lowest point — I can't believe I did this but at my lowest point I would routinely go to a dermatologist and get cortisone shots in my cystic acne. And I would watch where he stuck the needles and when he left the room I would steal a bunch of syringes and do it on myself at night.

Why does corporate Sephora call insults "gifts?" How do they get away with it?

Most of the people who work here are teenagers and they are happy to not be working at McDonald's. This is how they get away with it. As to the why of this issue, my best guess is that it's called a "gift" in an attempt to put a positive spin on what could be construed—let's face it, by anyone functioning normally as a human being—as negative feedback. They mask it with this new-agey shit like, "this is a gift for you to take to the future." Like we should be very glad that now we know our makeup looks like shit or that our shoes are fug, so that we can correct the situation and do a better job. Oh, also, Sephora is what we call a "values-based" company, which to my understanding means that we are not allowed to even say words like steal, shoplift, took, take, thief, what have you. Instead of loss prevention, we have "excellent client servicing." This means that we follow clients around, talking to them, helping them, basically watching them like hawks under the guise of customer service to ensure that the bad thing we're not supposed to say does not happen. So there isn't a security guard, no tags, nothing like that. Instead it's us, and I mean... our costumes don't have pockets for a reason, too. But yeah, we don't use negative terms at Sephora and "gift" is another example of that.

How quickly does stock move at your store? Do any of the items sit around on the shelves for a long time?

People are not feeling the Decleor skincare line. They don't buy the Bliss home waxing kit ever, either. We sell a lot of Perricone, but people seem to be kind of confused about the other cosmeceuticals unless I am here to enable them. Those are my favorite things to sell, but the names have gotten so technical for some of these products that people literally do not understand that oh, this is face cream. The department store brands don't sell... Clinique, Lancome, Shiseido, all of those. People can get those in other places so they tend not to care so much about them. Sometimes someone will come in and request a certain Lancome product or something, but for the most part, people are interested in the fun, new stuff. These products all have preservatives enough so that we can keep them on the shelf for years if they don't sell. Also, I'm not there all the time so it's hard for me to know exactly how much is moving in terms of a gross net. This isn't the kind of thing staff members are routinely consulted about, we're just told how much the store made and how much we are expected to sell for the day.

What's up with your fearless Leader, Cunty Claus? Did she do anything cunty this week?

She does some kind of cunty something every week, pretty much. This week I was at the store on a Sunday before it opened, and I mean, cast members use the front door just like everyone else so if that's locked, you're shit out of luck until someone opens it for you. So we're waiting outside in the cold, and by the time anyone remembered to open the door for us, we were all a grand total of three minutes late. I was the last one to clock in, and I was only three minutes late. Anyway, Cunty Claus took this opportunity to give all of us this terrible lecture at Touch Base, which is our opening meeting, and it's all about how she doesn't understand why we didn't call the store if we were going to be late, what are our excuses, we're late all the time, just a bunch of bullshit like that. I explained to her that we were only three minutes late according to the time clock and she launches into this whole big thing about how the time clock and the clock on the stage are different or something bullshitty. Basically she was just pissed we didn't hop to it in a big hurry freaking out over our jobs even though it wasn't even our faults in the first place that no one opened the doors sooner. She's on this extremely creepy power trip. Once she found me leaning against a display for what, a second, and she says, "We don't lean here. We stand at Sephora." What the fuck? Who says that? She's really into intimidating the cast members so that she seems more authoritative. I think she lives in a world where she has no power and any time she's not at Sephora, working, people like take their dicks out and wipe them on her face. But I guess Sephora is the place where she can avoid the Dirty Sanchez and so we're all three minutes late on Cunty Claus' beat.

How did you finally get rid of your acne?

Oh, that is a long story I will save for next time. But I literally know everything about anything having to do with your skin, so bring on the skin care queries. I am fired up and ready to fight your glands with you.

The night I met the guy I'm currently dating, he made me show him my driver's license to prove that I was the twenty-six I said I was instead of the twenty-two he insisted I must have been. Months later in our relationship, I had a sudden, belated pang of fear that he secretly wished I was twenty-two, and asked him why he'd thought I was. "Your skin. It's like... perfect," he told me. "Most twenty-six year olds already have some lines."

"Fuck you," I said, as this was clearly a bald-faced lie designed to make me feel better about my pukish blend of cigarette lines and acne scars, dingy blackheads and new, oozing zits. Then I remembered that I didn't have those anymore. I'd been using Retin-A Micro for the past year. Had it finally actually worked?

My acne had never been the kind that begets, like, pockmarks or anything, but it was bad enough to spend what seems like at least the plurality of my waking hours picking at. I consistently had a significant zit or two plus assorted clogged pores and blackheads (with that number tripling or quadrupling just in time to make me feel even more awesome about myself during PMS week) that I loved nothing more than to squeeze and poke and prod. Nothing, after all, is more satisfying than the sound a really good one makes upon giving up the white stuff. Other, that is, than the sight of said stuff splattering the mirror! So yeah, I had acne scars. Duh.

I hadn't considered using a prescription acne product before my friend Heather's boyfriend left a tube of his Retin-A Micro at her house. (Yeah, gay.) I used it just to see what would happen, and woke up with blissfully plump, radiant skin. It had also cleared up the zit problem, albeit very temporarily. What the fuckery was this? I needed some of this shit! I needed to do it. For me. When's the last time I did something for me? Like, never. Or, you know, like yesterday. But whatever. I wanted to be that girl with the perfect skin. I deserved it.

Retin-A Micro's active ingredient is a retinol called tretinoin that—and don't sue me, I'm a layman and this is to the best of my understanding—basically causes your skin to shed and renew itself at a much faster rate than it normally would, which means that it doesn't have enough time for the excess yuck that causes acne to get trapped between the layers. It's applied at nighttime, right between face wash and moisturizer. This means you have to learn to wash your face at night, even when shitfaced. I'm not saying this was easy.

The information on Retin-A Micro's official website tells you that you can expect all minor irritation as well as most of your acne symptoms to go away in two to seven weeks. This is a filthy lie. I wanted to wear a paper bag over my head for the first three months, despite using it only every other night and with copious quantities of moisturizer. The flaking, cracking, itching, and redness described so matter-of-factly on the website as a typical side effect was gruesome. I would wake up in the morning with shiny red patches of dead skin too tender to pull off concentrated around my chin and mouth area that would, over the course of the day, flake off onto my clothes like charming little snowdrifts of face-dandruff. And if you miss a spot in applying your sunscreen at the beginning of the day it will immediately turn the color of cancer.

The other thing I experienced was "purging." This meant that my acne was worse than it's ever been in my
life during the weeks the Retin-A Micro furiously sloughed layer after layer of my skin off to reveal all at once the new, exciting pustules that had been lurking there all along, waiting to surface gradually and slowly wreck my life. First, I stopped leaving the house altogether. Then I started avoiding mirrors. This, too, was something I deserved. Beauty hubris had gotten me here and I would be made to suffer for it.

After three months, things were better but not great. I had fewer zits. There were moments when my skin was perfectly clear and beautiful. I also spent about fifteen minutes every morning meticulously rubbing off the lovely, flaky, dead-skin beard that had surfaced around my jaw line overnight, and my previous obsession with squeezing blackheads morphed into a new obsession with searching out and removing errant skin-flakes. I also experienced acute sensitivity. After spending an ill-advised night making out with my poorly-shaven Italian ex-boyfriend, he gasped at the sight of me under the bright, florescent lights of the Dunkin' Donuts that was our eminently refined post-makeout ritual.

"I marked you all up!" he whispered in my ear. "Your neck looks like you barely escaped from the trailer park alive." Upon inspection, I saw that he was correct. My poor little faccia was all tore up; red and angry-looking. "Fuck you, Jason. We're never making out again."

Abstaining from makeout sessions with coarse-haired exes was not the only concession I had to make for Retin-A Micro. I also had to give up all but my gentlest face products, switching from the Dr. Hauschka line to Purpose. I knew by now that exfoliation was a bad idea, as were professional facials, going to sleep in my makeup, and sharing a girlfriend's Queen Helena Mint Julep mud mask. My skin may have finally begun to look like porcelain, but it was just as fragile.

I hardly noticed the slow tapering-off of Retin-A Micro's side effects or the slow increase of its benefits, but somewhere along the line, it started working for me. My skin looks better now than it did when I was in high school. While I still get the occasional pimple, it goes away quickly and it's never part of a larger trend of bad skin like it used to be. Also, Retin-A Micro's sloughing action does an even better job on wrinkles and skin texture than it does on acne. My face is smooth and even-toned, and far less reactive to stress or stubble than it used to be. It seems to be on my side again, or maybe on my side at last.

That being said, I'm really, really, really vain now, like the first girl in high school to stop eating things. And that, in reality, is probably uglier than a little bit of the old pizza-face. Oh well!