For the 15 years or so that I’ve been struggling with dermatillomania (a compulsive skin-picking disorder with roots, in my case, in mild OCD and dysmorphia), I’ve been setting little goals for myself in the weeks leading up to big events. Sometimes I hit them, like when I successfully left my bikini line alone for an entire month this past summer and was able to wear skimpy bathing suits on vacation; but most of the time, I don’t.
Recently, I told myself I was going to have perfect skin on my 30th birthday—all I had to do was stay away from the area between my brows, my go-to destruction spot. Things were looking promising until three days before my party, when I felt a small cyst forming under the skin in that area. What I should have done was tap on some max-strength benzoyl peroxide and wait it out. What I did, as usual, was convince myself I saw a speck of black, a hair deep, deep below the surface that needed to be dug out.
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Hours later, I emerged from the bathroom with a bloody hole in my forehead that looked about 100 times worse than the original bump. It scabbed over a day or two later, and of course, I picked at that too. On the morning of my birthday, I went for a HydraFacial at Pearlman Aesthetic Surgery, hoping that extra-glowy skin on the rest of my face would distract from all the makeup I’d need to cover the redness and uneven texture of my wound. But Christine, the nurse performing my treatment, had a better solution: she gave me a sample of Isdin Skin Drops and told me that a tiny amount covers everything—even bruising, tattoos, and vitiligo. I was skeptical, especially given that the foundation comes in only three shades and the lightest looked too dark for my skin, but she assured me that in her experience, the shades somehow adjust to work for most people.
Sure enough, it took just one highly pigmented drop, dabbed between my brows with my finger, to completely hide the evidence of my picking. The formula went on wet and quickly dried to a matte finish that didn’t smudge when I dusted over it with loose powder. (The shade matched, but not so exactly that I’d use it all over as foundation. Plus I wanted my facial glow to show through, and this was too full-coverage for that.)
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Normally, I layer green color corrector, foundation, and concealer over these types of blemishes—then still need to touch up throughout the night—but the Skin Drops did the work of all that and, thanks to the plant-based emollients in the formula, didn’t leave my complexion looking cakey. To everyone else that night, I looked as though I had flawless skin, which is the next best thing to actually having it.
