Worth It: Bloodshot-Free Eye Makeup Remover

Much unlike many a magazine editor who recommends you buy all sorts of crap that they most likely got for free, your Jezebel staff doesn’t get jack shit (other than books, unsolicited). And that’s how it should be. But on our own time, in our personal lives, we still buy stuff. So this is Worth It, our daily recommendation of random things that we’ve actually spent our own money on. These are the things we buy regularly or really like, things we’d actually tell our friends about. And now we’re telling you.

During a youthful time in which I was reading too many Victorian novels about consumptive ladies, I thought being a delicate flower was terribly romantic. I don’t know if this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but as an adult in the nonfictional world, being delicate, or more appropriately, sensitive, sucks. That includes eyes that turn red at the mere thought of eye makeup residue.

For that lovely red-tinged effect, I don’t even have to be drunkenly (or lazily) falling asleep without taking off my eye makeup, although that doesn’t help. Oil-free pads, oily stuff — somehow either it doesn’t do the trick or the solution itself irritates my eyeballs. Either way, I go through the following day looking at the world through a lens both painful and unappealing.

Coconut oil, as it turns out, is a solution both simple and delicious-smelling. I got hooked on it after I got a facial at a high-end mecca for the allergy-prone. (More on that another day.) All it takes is a dab with a cotton pad and it all comes off, sting-free then and sting-free on the morrow. VMV Hypoallergenics, where I went, sells their own pure, food-grade, cold-first-pressed, allergen-free coconut oil for $40, though I’m not using mine as moisturizer for hair and skin and see no reason not to re-up with, say, this one for a fraction of the price. Sure, it melts in the summer and hardens in the winter, but that doesn’t make much of a difference in utility. (You’re supposed to keep it in a dry drawer, but I haven’t done that.) Oh, and it smells good and it’s natural. Anyway, these days I’d rather pretend to be in the Caribbean than in corset-era England.

Jarrow Formulas Coconut Oil, $10.49, Drugstore.com.
Know It Oil, $25, VMV Hypoallergenics.
Worth It only features things we paid for ourselves and actually like. Don’t send us stuff.