5 Skincare Myths Your Mother Told You...Debunked

All of the truth (and lies) of your mother’s skincare advice   While searching for the perfect gift for Mother’s Day (in the beauty aisle - of course), I couldn’t help but reflect on the millions of tidbits of wisdom my mother has instilled upon me throughout the years about my skin. While I truly believed everything she said wholeheartedly, after working for a beauty company, I’m starting to get skeptical about some things. Taking these skincare myths into my own hands I did some investigation and here’s everything I found out.    

MYTH #1 “Blackheads are caused by dirty skin, you need to wash your face better!”

Turns out blackheads only occur when dead skin cells and oils collect in the opening of hair follicles, so yeah, you washed your face 5 times a day as a teenager for no reason!  

MYTH #2  “Make sure you use hot water to rinse your face, it will open up your pores!”

Despite what you may have heard, pores pretty much always stay the same size, they simply exist as a passageway for oil and hair follicles to grow. Also - be sure to wash your face with warm water, not hot water, mother doesn’t always know best!

MYTH #3: “Shaving makes hair grow back thicker and darker.”

As many times as you may have heard this, it is completely false. Shaving off hair at the surface level of skin doesn’t actually have any effect on the hair’s root or growth rate. However, shaving does leave the edge of hair feeling sharper than it did before. So- for those of you waiting all winter to shave your legs because you think it’s going to make a miracle happen - think again.  

MYTH #4 “If it has ingredients you can't pronounce, it's probably bad for you”

As the FDA requires plant-based ingredients to be listed by their scientific names on beauty products, not ALL super long confusing ingredient names are bad for you.  For example, there’s pseudopterogorgia elisabethae, which is the fancy word for a type of sea coral that is made of anti-inflammatory properties which are good for your skin!

MYTH #5 “Cystic acne is great for character building, don’t worry, you’ll grow out of it!”  

As much as your mother hoped that your acne would sort itself out and in the meantime give you a unique perspective on life, that probably wasn’t the case. Instead, you were left with horrible self-esteem and swollen pores. Do yourself a favor and invest in that fancy dermatologist or an ESPADA before it’s too late!