Zit Explosions

I have to make a slight detour and talk a little about models and their complexions while traveling. There are a select few who suffer from nothing more than a slight case of chapped lips or an oily forehead...but the rest of us do go through some skin trauma every time we travel.

Due to pollution, water conditions, changes in diet, lack of sleep, dehydration from long plane trips, most models will end up with a random explosion of zits during the first few weeks in a new city with nary an English speaking Dermatologist to be found. This, of course, is horrible because you want to make a great first impression on your agents and the new clients and photographers you'll be meeting. Walking around with a few prime goiters on your face is not exactly worthy of great self-esteemage.

I was mostly lucky in that I would get some minor break-outs that I could cover with some concealer and that would clear up in a day or two, but once in a while I would develop a nice crop of cystic acne somewhere painfully obvious like my chin that would make me cringe at the thought of leaving my apartment to face the hypercritical world I worked in. Hell, I probably would've cringed to go work at a burger joint when my breakouts were that bad. Luckily, the more I traveled and worked, the more I found out that models having skin issues while traveling was as common as finding out that people get boob jobs and laser hair removal in Los Angeles. Also, the more I traveled, the less my skin would react....it was starting to get used to the "abuse". ;)

I had make-up artists sympathize and tell me that they are always working with girls who get bad skin...especially in the bigger, dirtier cities like Milan, Athens, Paris and Taipei. They would suggest washing my face with bottled water, but the cost and pain in the assness of doing that was always daunting and eventually my zits would leave of their own accord and not return so it was all good. I also finally discovered tea tree oil soaps and astringents and that, to this day, has kept my pores clear.

Having had a Smartphone or real internet access during those times of skin crisis would've been nice. When I was traveling for work we all still pretty much depended on obscure internet cafes that charged up the wazoo for an hour of slooooow internet connections. I know that being able to hit up a site like Celibre or even WebMd would have helped me figure out how to prevent skin scares in the first place.

I remember out of sheer desperation, I ended up burning a little patch on my left cheek. Not burning as in "with fire", but a week before I was to be in Asia for a contract, I developed a stress zit smack dab on the middle of my cheek that had its own heartbeat and looked like Vesuvius. Painful and I knew I couldn't hide that thing. So I kept dabbing it day and night with Benzoyl Peroxide and rubbing alchohol and lo and behold a few days later the bump was gone but my skin was black in that spot. BLACK AND CRISPY. The burnt skin finally peeled off the day I was supposed to fly out, thank God. But still...gross.