My face has been through a lot.
In my teens I got friendly with sunbeds and hung out with them whenever I could. Back then Ultra Violet in my book was the shade of eye shadow that sat next to Electric Blue in the palette. I couldn’t get enough.
In my twenties I took a number of teaching jobs. My forehead animated continuously every day expressing incredulity, despair and general crossness.
My face grimaced through labour.
And then it did lots of smiling at two delicious little boys.
Since then, my face has been put to use beaming with pride at school plays and concerts; it has screwed itself up in disgust at festering football kit and it has scrunched up in fear as rugby tackles happened beneath its nose.
It has done a lot of crying too. The death of beloved pets; Toy Story 3; the bill for our extension.
To say nothing of a job which involved my face in 3am starts, and another job involving layers of TV make-up choking off its access to oxygen for hours at a time.
But sometimes the Universe is kind. My face was offered a life-line in the form of an easy to use home beauty kit.
Here’s the spiel. It’s called Silk’n FaceTite and it looks a bit like an electric razor. Obviously, it’s not an electric razor. It’s a high tech, heating-your-face-up thing.
You plug it in and glide it across your face, working on each area for fifteen minutes. It uses radio waves, infra-red light and LED light to stimulate collagen production. It claims that the technology involved ‘seeks out damaged tissue and repairs it.’
Obviously, I am as cynical as it gets about beauty products. And yet I am obsessed with them.
Julie Burchill once wrote, ‘A pretty face is not a passport, it’s a visa and it will run out.’ Those words have echoed around my head since I read them.
Your face, like the rest of your body, has a job to do, and it has to last a lifetime. I look after the rest of me; take it to the gym, force it though its 10,000 steps and its 5 fruit and veg portions each day, and I’ve taken the same approach with my face.
Since its run-in with a Basal Cell Carcinoma a couple of years ago I’ve slathered it in Factor Fifty every morning, rain or shine.
I took advice from a dermatologist who recommended an antioxidant with vitamins. I use it religiously.
And for the past ten weeks I’ve been using the Silk’n FaceTite kit twice a week.
In the first week, I found the heat a bit tricky to deal with. You’re supposed to keep the hot surface of the glider on your face for as long as you can bear it. I couldn’t bear it for too long.
I also found the halyronic gel that enables it to slide all over your face a bit messy.
After a few attempts though, I settled into a routine. The routine always started with a quick surf of Netflix to see what I could watch. Then I’d settle down with the dog on the sofa, plug in and smear some gel onto the area I wanted to work on, keeping a box of tissues to hand.
It really is easy to use. However, I did come up with a couple of rules for myself.
- Don’t put too much gel on at any one time, and only put it on the bit you’re doing. Otherwise it dries up before you get to it and you’ll use more of the stuff. Knock on is that your supply runs out quickly and your husband will wonder why he’s getting deliveries of ‘Slider Gel’ from Amazon (he’s the account holder in our house). He will also get his hopes up. ‘Slider Gel’ sounds like something you’d use for ‘adult fun’.
- Never, ever use within five hours of going out. Or, as in my case, making a TV appearance. Remember how your face looked the first time you fell asleep on the beach at Playa de las Americas? That’s how you’re going to look every time you use this bad boy. And it takes a while for the skin to calm down. (In an emergency, use a cooling face mask immediately to take some of the heat out. )
Ten weeks on and what’s happened?
Well, I’ve completed the final series of ‘The Good Wife’ for one thing. For another, a friend who saw me yesterday actually said out loud, ‘Your skin looks amazing.’ I wasn’t even paying for lunch.
I hope my skin looks amazing. It feels pretty good.
I reckon I’ve got a few more years on that visa…
